The Trajectory of India’s Middle Class : Economy, Ethics and Etiquette 1443872431, 9781443872430

Citation preview

The Trajectory of India’s Middle Class

The Trajectory of India’s Middle Class Economy, Ethics and Etiquette Edited by

Lancy Lobo and Jayesh Shah

The Trajectory of India’s Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette Edited by Lancy Lobo and Jayesh Shah This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Lancy Lobo, Jayesh Shah and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7243-1 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7243-0

CONTENTS

List of Figures, Maps and Tables ............................................................... ix Abbreviations ............................................................................................ xii Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xiv Foreword ................................................................................................... xv Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Lancy Lobo and Jayesh Shah Part 1: The Indian Middle Class: Old and New Chapter One ............................................................................................... 14 Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India M.N. Panini Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 40 Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities Madhuri Raijada Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 54 India’s Middle Class: Then and Now Mandakini Jha Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 63 The “New” Middle Class in India: Conceptual Dilemmas and Empirical Realities Juhi Singh

vi

Contents

Part 2: The Indian Middle Classes, the State, Globalization and Development Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 82 India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State: A Theoretical Perspective Leela Fernandes Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 95 India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms Ashok Lahiri Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 115 The Indian Middle Class and its Politics Nagesh Prabhu Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 136 Middle Class Politics in India and the Growth of the Anti-Corruption Movements and the Aam Aadmi Party Ashutosh Kumar Part 3: Locating the Indian Middle Class in Regional, Urban, and Rural Scenarios Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 160 After Hegemony: The Bengali Middle Class Sumit Howladar Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 170 Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Growth of the Rural Middle Class Supriya Singh Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 184 The Rural Middle Class: The Nature of Social Change in Charotar (Anand, Gujarat) Shashikant Kumar

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

vii

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 198 India’s Middle Class: Measuring Standard of Living and Health Disparity among Social Groups Rajesh Raushan Part 4: The Middle Class among Historically Deprived Social Groups and Minorities Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 220 Stratification and Growth of the Middle Class in the Indian Muslim Community Aditya Agarwal Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 232 The Emergence of the Indian Christian Middle Class in the PostLiberalization Era Justin Jose Part 5: Sociocultural Changes among the Indian Middle Class Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 248 Ageing in India: The Class Demographics and Policy Issues R.B. Bhagat Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 264 Social Media and Youth: The Emergence of a New Middle Class Rachna Sharma Part 6: Social Activism, Public Advocacy, and the Middle Class Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 276 Middle Class Resistance in Contemporary Urban India: How “New” are these New Social Movements? Gaurav Pathania Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 298 Claiming “Bengali Middle Class-ness” through “Social Sensitivity”: The Case of the Durgapur Steel Plant Township, West Bengal Shaoni Shabnam

viii

Contents

Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 323 Class Gains in Fisheries Management: Problems and Prospects Jharna Pathak Glossary ................................................................................................... 347 Contributors ............................................................................................. 349 Index ........................................................................................................ 351

LIST OF FIGURES, MAPS AND TABLES

Figures 2.1 Residential Shifts (Figures in percentages) ......................................... 48 2.2 Changing Icons (Figures in percentages)............................................. 48 2.3 Changing Job Profile (Figures in percentages) .................................... 49 2.4 Access to Domestic Support (Figures in percentages)......................... 50 2.5 Modes of Routine Transport (Figures in percentages) ........................ 50 2.6 Access to Medical Facility (Figures in percentages) ........................... 51 10.1 Depeasantization & Growth of the Rural Middle Class .................. 175 10.2 Embourgeoisement and Growth of the Rural Middle Class ............ 178 10.3 Political Choices of the Affluent Voters .......................................... 179 11.1 Rural-Urban Share ........................................................................... 186 11.2 Literacy Rate in Selected Villages ................................................... 190 15.1 Avergage Annual Growth Rate of Elderly and Working Age Population, 1971-2011....................................................................... 250 15.2 Ageing and Dependency Ratios, 1961 to 2011................................ 251 15.3 Size of Elderly by Class Status, 2011 (in million) ........................... 256

Maps 11.1 Location of Study Area.................................................................... 185 11.2 Transportation Network: Anand Taluka .......................................... 187 11.3 Score Map of Anand Taluka ............................................................ 188 11.4 Villages for Primary Investigation................................................... 190

Tables 6.1 Changes in the Relative and Absolute Size of the Middle Class, and Change in Aggregate Monthly Expenditure of the Middle Class by Country (1990–2008, based on household survey means), in Developing Asia .............................................................................. 97 10.1 The Villages at a Glance .................................................................. 173 11.1 Projected Rural Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) in Gujarat ........................................................................................... 184

x

List of Figures, Maps and Tables

11.2 Labour Force Projection (in Million) in Gujarat.............................. 185 11.3 Villages outside the City Limits as Service Centers for Urban Areas .................................................................................................. 189 12.1 Wealth Index and Socio Regional Distribution in India .................. 200 12.2 Living Standards among Middle Class Social Groups in India ............................................................................................... 202 12.3 Mother and Child Health among Social Groups in Middle Class .... 204 12.4 Illness among Social Groups in Middle Class in NFHS-3............... 205 12.5 Rotated Component Matrix based on selected Living Standard, Health status and Health care Behaviour among Middle Class People in India ................................................................................... 208 12.6 Structural Linkages of Living Standard, Health Status and Health Seeking Behaviour among Middle Class People in India .................. 210 13.1 Educational Levels Attained by Different Communities ................. 220 13.2 Employment Status of Different Communities in Urban Areas ...... 221 13.3 Percentage of Below Poverty Line (BPL) Population of Muslims in Rural and Urban Areas .................................................................. 223 13.4 Religious Subgroups and Education ................................................ 228 13.5 Share of Three Social Categories in Jobs in Some Public Sector Activities............................................................................................ 228 14.1 Distribution of Population by Religion ............................................ 233 14.2 Infrastructure of Christian Community............................................ 233 14.3 District-wise Remittances Received in Kerala (through U.A.E Exchange Centre during May 2001) .................................................. 237 15.1 Size and Proportions of Elderly Population 1951 to 2011 ............................................................................................... 249 15.2 Crude Birth Rate (CBR), Total Fertility Rate, Crude Death Rate (CDR), and Expectation of Life at Birth, 1951-2012 ......................... 250 15.3 Percentage of Elderly Population (60 plus) in India and States, 2001 and 2011 .................................................................................... 253 15.4 Sources of Income of Elderly Households by Class Status (in %) .. 257 15.5 Percentage of Elderly by Living Arrangements............................... 257 17.1 A Comparison of Anti-Corruption Movement and Anti-rape Movement .......................................................................................... 285 17.2 The Scale of Anna Hazare Movement on Social Media .................. 288 19.1 Growth in GDP at Factor Cost and its Components at 2004–05 prices (% per annum) ......................................................................... 324 19.2 MPCE, Poverty and Poverty Reduction Rates for Various Occupational Groups in Urban Areas ................................................ 326 19.3 Revenue Deficit and Share of Revenue Deficit to GDP .................. 328

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

xi

19.4 Major and Secondary Sources of Income and Status of Ownership of Assets by FCs: Ukai, Gujarat and Gandhisagar, MP ..................... 332 19.5 Fish Catch (by Species) and Income Earned by Fishers in FCs: Ukai, Gujarat and Gandhisagar, MP .................................................. 335 19.6 Average (median) Household Income, Contribution of and Difference in Income after FC Formation, by MJSI: Ukai, Gujarat and Gandhisagar, MP .................................................. 336 19.8 Head Count Ratio and Change in Poverty Status after FC Formation: Ukai, Gujarat and Gandhisagar, MP .................................................. 338

ABBREVIATIONS

AAP ACB ACM ADB AIIMS ANC AP BJP BPL BSP CBR CDR CITU CPIM CPR CSDS DSP FC FD FF FMCG GDP GPS IAC IHDS IIPS IITs IMAI IMF IRDP IT/ITES JNU LFPR MISH

Aam Aadmi Party Anti-Corruption Bureau Anti-Corruption Movement Asian Development Bank All India Institute for Medical Sciences Antenatal care Andhra Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party Below the Poverty Line Bahujan Samajwadi Party Crude Birth Rate Crude Death Rate Centre of Indian Trade Unions Communist Party of India Marxist Common Property Regime Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Durgapur Steel Plant Fishing Cooperative Fishing Department Fish Federation Fast Moving Consumer Goods Gross Domestic Product Global Positioning System India against Corruption Indian Human Development Survey International Institute for Population Sciences Indian Institutes of Technology Internet and Mobile Association of India International Monetary Fund Integrated Rural Development Programme Information Technology /Information Technology Enabled Services Jawaharlal Nehru University Labour Force Participation Rate Market Information Survey of Households

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

MP MPCE MPFDC MPFF NCAER NCRLM NDA NES NF NFHS NGO NRIs NSHIE NSMs NSS NSSO OBC PDA PPP RGNF RMP RSS RTI RTI SC SMS SP ST TB TDP TFR UMC UNFPA UPA UPSC VHP

xiii

Madhya Pradesh Monthly per capita expenditure Madhya Pradesh Fish Development Corporation Madhya Pradesh Fish Federation National Council of Applied Economic Research National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities National Democratic Alliance National Election Study National Front National Family Health Survey Non-Governmental Organization Non-Resident Indians National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure New Social Movements National Sample Survey National Sample Survey Organisation Other Backward Class Personal Digital Assistance Purchasing Power Parity Rajeev Gandhi National Fellowship programme Rural Manpower Programme Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Reproductory Tract Infections Right To Information Scheduled Caste Short Messaging Service Samajwadi Party Scheduled Tribe Tuberculosis Telugu Desam Party Total Fertility Rate Upper Middle Class United Nations Population Fund United Progressive Alliance Union Public Service Commission Vishwa Hindu Parishad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Looking at the significance of the Middle Class in India, a seminar was held at the Centre for Culture and Development (CCD), Vadodara at the end of November 2013. The Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi made it possible with a generous grant. Alka Srivastava of ICSSR goaded us on for bringing out an edited volume. The contributors to this seminar revised their papers and selected papers were edited for this volume. Cambridge Scholars Publishing had shown interest even before the seminar took place. We are grateful to Professor A.M. Shah for his guidance during the course of preparing this volume. We thank the contributors for their prompt cooperation. We are thankful to Lord Meghnad Desai for his Foreword. Professor M.F. Salat and Christopher Pipe deserve our thanks for editing and proof reading the papers. Amba Gamit of CCD has patiently done the word processing. Lancy Lobo Jayesh Shah

FOREWORD THE SLIPPERY ATTRACTIONS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

We are all middle class. Or at least the vote seeking politicians would like us to believe that we are or at the very least his or her party would do their best to get you into a middle class. Or perhaps you will slot into what is called neo-middle class. The middle class is by its very label a slippery category. Marx and Engels began their Manifesto by asserting that all history is the history of class struggle. But the middle class was not a part of their geography of the classes. The two classes were the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. The feudal classes were on their way out. There was the deplorable lumpenproletariat. But the middle class was nowhere in the classic description. Of course, the third volume of Capital trails off just as Marx comes to the description of class. So he never defined class properly. For Marxists of late nineteenth century, class definitions were necessary for charting the likelihood of the socialist revolution. In this effort, the middle class was a suspect category. Its allegiances were divided. It was most likely to be enthusiastic at first for change and then betray the workers as the going got rough. So we had the middle class labelled as the petit-bourgeoisie who never quite won the admiration of the Marxists – many of whom were undoubtedly middle class. Marx is dead and even more so is Lenin. Nowadays we need class categories for economic policy purposes, for marketing strategies and for analysing political developments. In developed countries – the UK, for example – almost everyone is described as middle class. The old romantic attachment to the notion of belonging to the working class which was there even as recently as the 1960s is no longer there. Poverty is there (by the definition of income being under 65% of the median income), as is hardship. But as far as party political rhetoric is concerned, there is only the middle class. Strategies for measuring the size of the middle class often start with income. Let us say the middle class is somewhere between the bottom

xvi

Foreword

three income deciles and the top two. Or we could say that the middle class is that group whose income is above the mean income which puts it into a minority since in an unequal society, the mean is way above the median. Income itself is a tricky notion because earned income – salary – may not be all that a family has. We need to factor in assets and move towards what the economists call permanent income. This is where narrowly defined income categories have to be supplemented by “sociological” considerations of aspirations and attitudes. Mary Douglas, who was a distinguished anthropologist, once tried to define class by consumption patterns. In a book The World of Goods (1979) co-authored with Baron Isherwood, she tried to classify the goods consumed in terms of the desire to communicate. She thought that while the poorer classes spent their money on food and drink – isolating goods – the British middle classes spent theirs on acquiring telephones (important in the 1970s) and having a spare room in their flats so friends could visit. Only by consuming communicating goods could one ensure upward mobility. She wanted the welfare state to give more communicating goods to the poor so they could enjoy mobility. The very notion of the middle class is tied in with economic development within a capitalist society. Historically, the growth of the colonial state, which began in the port cities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, confined the middle class to those regions. With independence, the whole country became available for the aspiring household to be middle class. Yet growth was uneven across the regions. Thus, some regions had more of a middle class than others – the North East, for example, which remained underdeveloped. India has transited from a rather restricted state capitalism of the Nehru-Gandhi era to a slightly more liberal version of state capitalism. This transition has thrown up new avenues for people to enter the middle class. If you add, for the Hindu sections of the population, the complication of caste, the notion of a working class Brahmin would make no sense, poor though the household may be. A middle class Dalit family is a recent phenomenon. Muslims have an even smaller middle class and that too more unevenly spread across India – more in the coastal cities of western India and in south India than in north India. This is why putting a number on the size of the middle class is such a tricky operation. Perhaps the idea of the middle class should be used as a normative criterion of how developed an economy has become. A society which has a majority of its population defining itself as middle class can be safely called a developed society. India has a long way to go before it arrives at that stage.

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette xvii

In the meanwhile, enjoy this book which is rich in its scope and the quality of its contributors. Meghnad Desai London School of Economics

INTRODUCTION LANCY LOBO AND JAYESH SHAH

I General Introduction The middle class has been historically linked to the question of development, especially in the post-colonial context, where one of the defining features of this category has been its role as the articulator and representative of the interests of the masses. This role was performed by this class in colonial India and continued in the post-Independence period under the Nehruvian model of development (Shabnam 2012). India’s growth achievements since the 1990s have put the living standards of many Indians under global scrutiny. While the economic literature has primarily focused on poverty and inequality, the fortunes of the “new Indian middle class” have received substantial attention in the media and business journals, as their earning potential and spending habits have important implications for the national/global economy. Who is the Indian middle class? A broad definition, reflected in most references to the middle class, places these households between the poor and the extremely rich. This potentially encompasses a very large and varied group of individuals; but the Indian middle class has been typically perceived to be an educated section of urban society employed in or seeking white collar jobs. Is class merely a question of income? Apart from income, one needs to take into account the nature of middle class consciousness of itself. What are the concrete indicators and manifestations of the middle class? Are they neighbourhoods, clubs, associations, kinds of houses, gadgets therein, and vehicles? Do they include the middle class and the nature of the celebration of life cycle events, kinship relations, life in the neighbourhood, intercaste/interfaith relations, speech and language, and behaviour? What about the middle class within a caste? How can one recognize the middle class from its external behaviour, aspirations, and

2

Introduction

consciousness? These are some of the questions that need to be addressed by scholars for an adequate understanding of the middle class. The size and characteristics of the Indian middle class deserve attention for several reasons. India possesses a sixth of the world’s population and therefore its middle class constitutes a significant portion of the global workforce as well as a substantial market for final products. Secondly, the Indian middle class seems ideally placed to partake of the direct trickle-down benefits of high growth and to respond to economic incentives in a way that would make the growth sustainable. Finally, the growth and consumption habits of the middle class serve as a useful metric of how living standards in India are changing. Hence, it seems essential to develop a rigorous method for defining and identifying the Indian middle class. However, there have been increasing debates and critical analysis concerning this dimension of the middle class over recent years, mostly within the general discourse that emerged in the post-liberalization phase centering on the rise of what has been termed the “new middle class” and its implications for an altered understanding of the idea of “middle class” itself in India. It is important to point out here that surprisingly enough the relationship of the middle class to the question of development remains a relatively less attended area in the Indian scholarly domain. Although some of the recent studies have specifically looked at the relationship of the middle class to the environment issue, any holistic study of the middle class and its relationship to the broader issues of development, society and culture remain a less explored but a hugely interesting area (Shabnam 2012).

The Middle Class in India Existing scholars have a common belief that the Indian middle class is hardly monolithic and economic interests hardly homogeneous. The National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) put the middle class at 50 million people (roughly 5% of the total population of India) in 2005 and 142 million people (roughly 12% of total population of India) in 2011 (Beinhocker et al 2007). If income is a fickle way of measuring the middle class, focusing on middle class “values” can also be treacherous territory. An estimate by the political scientist Devesh Kapur, using higher education as a yardstick, was that 30 million households, one-eighth of the total population of India, were middle class in 2010 (Sitapati 2011). Presenting it in relative terms, another recent estimate by K.P. Kannan and G. Raveendran set the number of middle income Indians at around 19% of

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

3

the total Indian population in the year 2011 (Kannan and Raveendran 2011). However, they also point to significant regional variations in the spread of the middle-income group. Another “value”-based definition by sociologist Beteille (2001), focuses on occupation status and non-manual work. From the different studies on the subject, it is possible to conclude that the Indian middle class comes from varied economic backgrounds, constitutes a relatively small percentage of the population and is slightly easier to define in terms of “values” (Sitapati 2011). Contemporary research on the Indian middle class points out that there are two opposing camps, reflecting contrasting standpoints, concerning this class (Shabnam 2012). First, the middle class is seen as having grown in terms of its sheer numerical strength and having established itself as a prominent consuming class that can be used as a case to prove the success of the liberalization of the Indian economy even to the extent of the coming of a “New India”. Secondly, such claims have been attended with a moral anxiety concerning the changing nature of this class: whether the rise of this class, as a marker of increasing consumerism in India, can be seen as a welcome change and whether it has wider implications. The question of critical importance is the impact these policies have had on most members of a class which for quite some time now have quite demonstrably surrendered all pretence of idealism or morality or social sensitivity on the twin altars of self-interest and material well-being. The policy of economic liberalization provided the Indian middle class with an excuse for separating its world even more blatantly from the vast masses of the destitute and deprived in India (Varma 2007). The role of the middle class, thus perceived, and the moral, ideological underpinnings of the idea of the middle class as representing wider interests of the nation which seem to have undergone a radical change over recent times, naturally come under closer scrutiny in any discussion on the middle class and its relationship to the question of development (Shabnam 2012). If we try to look at some of the basic assumptions of this claimed change it seems to suggest a neat inter-connection between the changing state framework and its policy of economic reforms, the resultant changing class location of the middle class and consequently, its changing class characteristics and the interests that it represents. The middle class also needs to be understood analytically in terms of its role in relation to the state, market and the civil society and the role it continues to play in articulating the socio-economic and political interests of diverse communities (Jodhka and Prakash 2011). While this conceptual elaboration restricts the numerical strength of the middle class, it expands

4

Introduction

the analytical frame to understand the interaction of the middle class with the state, market, and civil society. The main focus of the book is some general claims of change concerning the relationship of the middle class to the question of development, society, culture, and public advocacy. This book brings together the diverse lines of arguments provided by the scholarly domain concerning middle class. In keeping with the focus, the book attempts to fulfil the following objectives: x To explore the structural continuities and patterned discontinuities between the colonial, post-colonial and the “new” middle class x To understand the relationship of the middle class at different points of time with the society on one hand and the state and economy on the other x To make sense of the complex relationship between governance, political democracy, and the middle class x To understand how the middle class interacts with the state and influences the market on one hand and dominates political articulations and social relationships on the other x To understand the socio-political and economic articulation of the middle class amongst historically marginalized social groups like Dalits, Tribals and minorities x To discuss the socio-cultural changes among the middle class in India x To look at some of the general claims of shift concerning the relation of the middle class to the question of development, society, culture, and public advocacy

II The book is divided into six parts. The first part of the book is based on the theme “The Indian Middle Class: Old and New” and attempts to explore and understand the following: x The sociological markers – changing ideologies and aspirations of the middle class x The transformation of the Indian middle class x The “then” and “now” of the Indian middle class x The growth and changing aspirations of the Indian middle class x The “new” middle class identity in the post liberalization period

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

5

x The idea of consumerism as the marker of the “new” middle class Panini focuses on the process of bourgeoisification which is gaining new social significance in India under the influence of globalized market forces and advances in information and media technologies. Bourgeoisification refers to the expansion of the social space occupied by the middle class and to its increasing size and salience in terms of the power and influence it wields in economic, political, and social dimensions. It is both a structural and a social process. According to him, the Indian middle class has access to “soft power” whereby it gains the power of persuasion and legitimacy for its ideas and actions. The Indian middle class is also very diverse and colourful and bourgeoisification will help strengthen these trends of the middle class. Raijada attempts to understand the “then” and “now” of the Indian middle class in the context of its composition and structural changes, its claims of arrival, its aspirations, attitudes, and value systems and government policy contributions. Her essay unravels the transformation of the middle class in the context of some sociological markers and their changing ideologies and aspirations. She charts the course of middle class growth during three periods, viz., 1850–1947, 1947–1991 and 1991– present times. According to her, the middle class has emerged as a multilayered class from a single homogenous class. A survey carried out by her examines various aspects of the middle class such as travelling patterns, consumption patterns, and access to medical facilities. Jha, while focusing on education, income, and occupation, traces the trajectory and the various processes involved in the making of the middle class in India from the time it was regarded as “an important social formation of some significance”. She also tracks the growth of the Indian middle class during three significant periods – the pre-British period, British rule and post-independence period. She concludes that postindependence India saw the middle class having a “managerial” relationship with the state as service and professional classes and later as an “assertive and visible” competitor for claims on the state, and these developments can be said to be also responsible for the rise of the new middle class identity in liberalizing India. The cultural capital of higher education and social capital acquired through professional careers continue to dominate the new middle class but along with it, it is also distinguished from the “old” Indian economy by its global integration. Juhi Singh aims to examine the dilemmas of conceptual use and definitions of the middle class from the available literature and provide possible explanations for more convincing use of the word “new” or

6

Introduction

“emergent” middle classes. With an ambiguity that pervades the definition of the “new middle class”, she explores the experiences of three respondents belonging to different castes and social backgrounds with respect to their professional experiences and aspirations. This was carried out using the case study method. She concludes by putting forward both an idea and a question as to whether consumption and consumerism can be considered as the markers of the new middle class. The second theme, “The Indian Middle Class, the State, Globalization, and Development”, reflects upon critical issues such as: x The dynamics of the state and the middle class especially in the post urbanization period x Conflict of interest between different sections of the middle class x Political implications of the organization of the middle class x The impact of the middle class on Indian politics x Differences between the old and the new middle class x The nature of politics with the rise of middle class of a particular type – especially affiliated to a particular identify and type of nationalism x The nature and growth of the middle class in India Leela Fernandes discusses the Indian middle class and the postliberalization state with reference to a theoretical framework. She points out that though scholarship in this area has looked at the relationship between the state, business, and workers, less attention has been given to the ways in which the relationship between India’s middle classes and the state was restructured in the post-liberalization periods of the mid-1980s and 1990s. She puts forth a theoretical analysis of this relationship between the state and the middle classes with a focus on how middle class–state relations play a role in shaping the post-liberalization state developmental agenda and the tensions and the strains that arise through conflicts that emerge between this post-liberalization state agenda and the broader developmental multi-class demands on the state. Taking an economist’s view of the middle class, Lahiri’s essay touches upon several significant features such as: x The definition of middle class x The variety of alternative understandings of the middle class in India x The importance of the middle class in India x The link between sustainable development and middle class

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

7

x The nature of the growth of middle class According to him, in India the middle class has made strides, but not as much as in some other Asian countries. After providing a detailed introduction to the definition of the middle class and the role of the middle class in economic development, he discusses whether the policy stance in India has given short shrift to the middle class by focusing on other income categories. He also suggests that the middle class has failed to become a vocal interest group to steer the course of economic policies in a democratic set up. Looking to the perspective of mass media professional, Prabhu explores the following four issues: the rise of social groups that go in the making of the middle class in India, the appearance of consumer based identity of the middle class and its job preferences, the impact of the middle class on Indian politics as well as on state policy, and a shift in the political leanings of the Indian middle class since the 1990s. He attempts to track the growth of the Indian middle class during the pre- and postindependence era as well as state activities that led to the growth of the middle class. He observes that the middle class has served as a backbone for economy, democracy, and modernization in the country. Ashutosh Kumar addresses the question of the “new” middle class and its significance in India. He refers to the expansion of the middle class with the emergence of the new categories of the middle class in late postcolonial India experiencing economic and democratic transition. He suggests that these emergent categories of the “new” middle class and its economic, cultural, and political choices are increasingly influencing the way politics and economies are assuming shape in India. He refers to the middle class as “cultural entrepreneurs” who easily lap up authoritarian leadership and alternative forms of politics. Part Three of the book, “Locating the Indian Middle Class in Regional, Urban, and Rural Scenarios”, deliberates on the following in the four essays: x The standard of living and status of health of middle class groups x The need to develop a universal definition and measurement techniques with respect to the middle class in varied contacts x The changing ethos of the Gujarati urban middle class x The emergence of new urban Gujarati middle class, different from the traditional x The nature and dynamics of rural middle class x Change in Rural–Urban dynamics of the middle class

8

Introduction

x Examination of the processes of depeasantization, embourgeoisement and the subsequent rise of the rural middle class On the Bengali middle class, Howladar attempts to engage with the various nuances of politics in the state of West Bengal vis-à-vis the middle class. He traces the trajectory of the Bengali middle class (referred to as the Bhadralok in colonial times) from the era of British colonialism to the Left rule and now the Trinamool rule in Bengal. With the coming of Mamata Banerjee at the helm of power, there has been the subsequent emergence of identity politics in the state. This seems to threaten the prevalent hegemony of the middle class which characterized the Left Front regime. He undertakes a case analysis of Bengali commercial cinema to highlight how the old middle class is loosening its grip over popular culture. Presently, Bengali commercial cinema is directly catering to consumerist aspirations and fantasies connected with neo-liberalism. He observes that the present regime in West Bengal is trying to break down the old Bhadralok hegemony and create a new Bhadralok class with allegiance to the Trinamool. Supriya Singh comments upon several dynamic changes in the political and social behavior of the Indian middle class. According to her, a significant shift is seen towards modern day occupations, individualcentric life, inclination towards middle class values and consumerism. She examines the processes of depeasantization, embourgeoisement and subsequent emergence of rural middle class as an outcome of land transactions. She calls for sociological attention to the rise and growth of the rural middle class based on the study of two villages of Lucknow district in Uttar Pradesh using intensive fieldwork as well as secondary data. The trend of the rural middle class moving to urbanization and modern day consumerist values is increasingly being observed and this has resulted into a change in the structure and nature of the rural middle class. In an effort to map the nature of social change in Charotar, Gujarat, Shashikant Kumar focuses on inter-linkages established from the study of sample villages of Anand taluka (an administrative unit of a district) from secondary data as well as primary data. He considers several indicators such as job profiles, income changes, change in housing characteristics and consumption indicators for the study. He argues for a change in urbanrural dynamics by virtue of identical demands of goods and services fuelled by new economy as the reduction in migration trends, consumption of white goods, and highly mobile social class requires needs for more focus on the rural middle class who are emerging as new drivers of economic growth in India.

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

9

Rajesh Raushan observes that the Indian middle class is a heterogeneous group and embodies diversity in language, religion, and caste. His study is framed to analyse the standard of living and status of health of the middle class in the country using the third wave of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data collected in 2005–06 for all 28 states and Delhi. The wealth index of the household is used to find out Indian middle class population. He depicts several statistical results related to parameters like availability of different facilities and health status of the middle class with reference to the illness suffered by them. He concludes that there is a huge variation among social groups even within the middle class and this call for further investigation. The fourth part, “The Middle Class among Historically Deprived Social Groups and Minorities”, addresses broad issues such as: x The middle class among the Indian Muslim community x The notion of a Bengali middle class from the vantage point of it being a social guardian, a power block and a mediating agency x The emergence and issues of the Indian Christian middle class and the challenges faced by them Significant points such as threats to Indian secularism by extremist forces, internal tensions among the Christian middle class in India, the crisis of identity faced by them, the search for alternative narratives of the middle class and how the middle class looks at class, caste, gender, and liberalization come up for discussion in the four chapters of this section. Aditya Agarwal focuses on the middle class among the Indian Muslim community and brings to light several aspects with respect to the demographic structure, educational backwardness, and stratification in the Indian Muslim community. He argues that the rise of the middle class among the Muslim community in recent years has not been sufficiently studied. He attempts to explain two major concerns about what factors explain social and educational backwardness of “lower” groups of the Muslim population of India and what factors contribute to the rise and growth of the middle class in the Muslim community in India. The next essay unfolds the experiences of the Indian Christian middle class and the challenges before them. Justin Jose attempts to identify who the middle class are in the Christian community, what their economic pattern is in this era of liberalization, and whether any improvement can be made in their present status. He comments upon various issues of relevance like the emergence of the Indian Christian middle class as narrated by three real life experiences of Christians belonging to the

Introduction

10

middle class from different parts of the country, the divisions within the Christian community, and the nature of the different “middle classes” among the Indian Christians. He also provides some concrete suggestions regarding the stabilization of the complex relationship between the emerging Christian middle class and the government with respect to their socio-cultural and economic uplift. The fifth part deals with “Sociocultural Changes among the Indian Middle Class” and discusses the following issues of a diverse range: x x x x

Ageing in India – The class demographics and policy issues Indian middle class as a power block The need for extensive academic engagement with the middle class The idea and representations of the middle class as reflected in popular culture x Middle class youth and the social media x Understanding the role of the middle class in relation to changing patterns and trends of communication

Bhagat argues that ageing is a matter of recent concern and much historical and theoretical debate surrounds this issue. While ageing is an achievement in human society, it has put forth enormous challenges. In India, there are about 100 million people aged 60 plus. The aged are not a homogeneous group and they belong to different classes with varied challenges and potential for change. His chapter analyses the conditions of the aged from an economic perspective, particularly their sources of income and livelihood, support they receive from their family and children, their living arrangements and the extent of support from state programmes. He tries to argue that old age support should not be seen as a mere response from the government and families but the civil society led by middle class has an even greater role to play for a productive and dignified integration of old people in a time of rapid changes in the institutions of family and social organizations. He concludes that ageing is a success story and the problems faced by the middle class elderly should be the subject of research. In continuing with providing an in-depth understanding of the role of the middle class in relation to changing patterns and trends in communication, Rachna Sharma explores the emergence of a new middle class in relation to social media and youth. She observes that in keeping with the characteristics of social media, its ability to mitigate the constraints of space and time, its participatory nature and the diverse range of communication and expression made possible by its use, there seems to

The Trajectory of India's Middle Class: Economy, Ethics and Etiquette

11

be a rise in the pro-active socio-political existence of the youth who use such media. She attempts to study the implications of social media and the behaviour of youth. Since social media are creating a parallel virtual society with its own norms, its own public sphere, and its own set of social sanctions, it becomes interesting to try and understand the socio-culturalpolitical process and behaviour of the emerging middle class and its relationship with the real society and social media. The last part of the book is on the theme “Social Activism, Public Advocacy, and the Middle Class” and discusses the following themes: x Participation of the middle class in recent movements and the expression of middle class angst against the state x Wider social engagement of the Bengali middle class by an examination of the narratives of public sector employees connected to several associational spaces x Engagement of the middle class with the ruling class and its implications for a particular community Pathania provides a comparative view of India Against Corruption (IAC) Movement and the Anti-Rape protest movement in Delhi with respect to the role of the urban, educated middle class in both the movements. He attempts to discover commonalities and differences in both the movements which appeared to be mainly middle class – a force to reckon with – in the chapter. He observes that the mass base for both the movements was mostly middle class and it reflected the angst of the middle class against the inefficiency of the state. The media (especially the social media) served as the most crucial platform for information for the middle class. The middle class used both these movements to get across their grievances against the political system. Shabnam’s essay examines the middle class as an “active” agent shaping its own “class-ness” by analysing some middle class voices from a steel township in West Bengal – the Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP). Through a contextualized analysis of an on-going empirical work conducted in the Durgapur Steel Plant Township, she explores the theme of the wider social engagement of the Bengali middle class by looking at the narratives of some of the public sector employees who were connected to various kinds of extra-professional, associational spaces, be they formally political, cultural, or of the civil society forum. Jharna Pathak mirrors the debate on common property resource centres around issues of a particular strategy for managing it in order to cater to the growing demand of communities that depend on it and the economy at

12

Introduction

large that would like to benefit from the use of natural resources. She uses the Fishing Cooperatives (FC) formed in the large reservoir project of Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to look into the process of understanding the engagement of the middle class with ruling class and its implications in terms of income and inequality of fishermen. She discusses the future of corruption, economic reform, and democracy in developing countries in her essay.

References Beinhocker, Eric D., Diana Farrell, and Adil S. Zainumbhai. 2007. “Tracking the Growth of India’s Middle Class”, The McKinsey Quarterly, No.3, retrieved from www.mckinsey.com/mgi. Beteille, Andre. 2001. “The Indian Middle Class”, retrieved from http://www.hinduonnet.com/2001/02/05/stories/05052523.htm. Jodhka, Surinder S. and Aseem Prakash. 2011. “The Indian Middle Class Emerging Cultures of Politics and Economics”, KAS International Reports, retrieved from http://www.kas.de/wf/doc/kas_29624-544-230.pdf?111205133538. Kannan, K.P. and G. Raveendran. 2011. “India’s Common People: The Regional Profile”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVI, No. 38 (17–24 September), pp. 60–73. Shabnam, Shaoni. 2012. “The Indian Middle Class, the State and Development: An Enquiry into the Broad Claims of Shifts in Neoliberal India”, April 11, 2012, Inclusive – a Journal of Kolkata Centre for Contemporary Studies, retrieved from www.theinclusive.org. Sitapati, Vinay. 2011. “What Anna Hazare’s Movement and India’s New Middle Classes Say about Each Other”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV, No. 30 (23 July), pp. 39–44. Varma, Pavan K. 2007. The Great Indian Middle Class, New Delhi: Penguin India.

PART 1: THE INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS: OLD AND NEW



CHAPTER ONE EMBOURGEOISEMENT AND THE MIDDLE CLASSES IN INDIA M.N. PANINI

My focus here is on the role of the middle classes in India. I view the middle classes not as the middle layer in a vertical hierarchy but as “middle” in an architectural sense. I argue that the middle classes, like keystones that hold up the arches of a building, evolve and sustain the dominant cultural ethos that contributes to social cohesion and stability. Even as they play the critical role of evolving and sustaining cultural hegemonies, the middle classes produce critics who interrogate cultures, expose the inequities in the system and supply the technology and the expertise to shake up the social edifice. Al Qaeda was able to shake up the world order mainly because it had a dedicated band of middle class professionals well versed in modern technology to translate its vision into effective subversive strategies. In order to grasp the role that middle classes play in society, we need to grapple with the phenomenon of embourgeoisement, which is about the growing salience of the middle classes both in structural and cultural terms. As I understand it, the structural dimension of embourgeoisement refers to the creation of spaces that need to be filled by knowledge-based skills and expertise that the middle classes possess. Such social spaces are becoming critical for the viability and sustenance of networks of relationships. The cultural dimension of embourgeoisement refers to the percolation of conservative, if not reactionary, “middle class values”, but we also cannot ignore the fact that the revolutionary vanguard and leaders of radical social movements have emerged and are increasingly emerging from the middle class. This dual view of the middle classes runs against the classic Marxist tradition that views the working class as revolutionary and anticipates the withering away of the middle class or projects it as the class in an unholy alliance with capital to postpone the ultimate socialist revolution. Some



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

15

sociologists have noted that instead of withering away, the middle classes have grown both in size and significance thereby undermining their revolutionary zeal, a thesis that actually supports Marxist understanding (Goldthorpe et al. 1969). From the Gramscian perspective this sort of embourgeoisement only demonstrates the ability of the middle class to use mass media in creating a cultural hegemony that legitimizes authoritarian trends and undermines working class consciousness (Gramsci 1971). By getting even the ruling class to submit itself to the values and norms of the system, hegemony is further reinforced. The hegemony that is constructed accommodates institutional changes and reforms which, according to Gramsci, only amount to a “passive revolution” that actually blocks the path of genuine revolution. In India, some Marxist scholars have innovatively used the idea of passive revolution to account for the fact that social and political trends are not following the contours of change predicated by the processes of primitive accumulation under capitalism. As Partha Chatterjee (2008) has noted, as primitive accumulation gathers momentum in India the political class uses its control over the levers of power to ameliorate its brutalities by compensating the poor, the dispossessed, and the displaced through social welfare and poverty eradication programmes thereby co-opting them into the system and undermining their revolutionary potential. The peasants are losing their lands and workers their means of livelihood and there is no prospect of their being meaningfully reabsorbed into the system of production. The subventions doled out by the state perpetuate the passive revolution, although Chatterjee recognizes that the passive revolution that we are now witnessing is different from the one that Sudipto Kaviraj describes to account for the phase of socialist planning. Chatterjee offers his own explanation of how the socialist form of passive revolution morphed into its new form under the hegemony of corporate capitalism. He regards passive revolution in India as the outcome of the balancing act performed by the state between the corporate sector and the victims of primitive accumulation. He relegates the middle class to the civil society that enjoys formal rights. Like all Marxists he treats the middle class as playing a conservative, if not a reactionary, role of supporting the ruling class. Partha Chatterjee’s account is problematic because it underplays the role of the middle class. True, the middle class has been conservative but it has also inspired and led forces against capital. We should not forget that the middle class shaped the moral economy of the state-dominated socialist regime of the pre-liberalization days in India and is now prominent in movements resisting globalization. The political class in



16

Chapter One

India (as Chatterjee defines it) has always relied on the middle class for its legitimacy and what is more important is that the Indian democracy has opened up a new path to embourgeoisement through electoral politics and through the politics of caste and community based reservations. Middle class sensibilities are now increasingly influencing the political class. In other words, the middle class plays a dominant role in the construction and deconstruction of moral economies, in amplifying clashes of interests as well as in compelling social compromises that muffle these clashes. I find Chatterjee’s assessment problematic for yet another reason. It becomes an apologia for the persistence of passive revolution. It trivializes reconfigurations of social relations that are occurring under contemporary globalization. The spread of embourgeoisement to different castes and communities has brought the language of cultural rights prominently into political discourse. At the same time, several NGOs are leading movements focusing on the civil rights of individuals to information, employment, land rights, and rights to health; these movements gloss over the rights of castes and communities as such. This marks a new trend of embourgeoisement that has brought to prominence the issue of corruption in politics and has undermined the legitimacy of the state by exposing the complicity of the political class in scandals that have caused huge losses to the public exchequer. The state, as well as the political class, is now under tremendous pressure to reform itself and become more transparent and accountable to the people. The spread of civil rights consciousness has pushed corporate interests on the back foot. India is losing its sheen as one of the more attractive destinations for foreign capital investment and private corporations are realizing that their path to prosperity and profit is no longer guaranteed by colluding with the bureaucracy and the political class. They now have to trudge through the political minefield of rights that give immense local power to NGOs and political groups outside the spectrum of party politics. A reconfiguration of relations between the civil society, the state, and the corporate sector is predicated by these changes. Although it is not yet clear whether it would weaken the hold of oligopolies on the state and eliminate underhand dealings of politicians and bureaucrats with business interests, the room for “crony capitalism” is now getting severely restricted. Capitalism is not likely to disappear in the near future but private corporations will be compelled to show greater sensitivity to civic issues and social causes. These trends might lead to the emergence of a more transparent and socially accountable economic regime of private corporations. Of course, acute observers are warning that fascist trends and communalization of politics might also get strengthened but the contemporary media trends combined with the regime of rights are



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

17

powerful countervailing forces. What I want to stress is that the notion of passive revolution diverts attention from the complexity and radical nature of social and political changes unleashed by embourgeoisement in India. Passive revolution has become an anaemic teleological substitute that is unable to detect the sources of radical changes that we are witnessing every day. It also fails to grapple with the social contradictions that have been set in motion by the dual and contradictory nature of the Indian middle classes. The middle classes in India have always punched above their qualifying category and that too with effect. Although they do not always wield political power as such, they play a vital role in the construction, legitimization, and maintenance of hegemonies or in subverting them. The middle classes possess the vital theoretical and technical expertise that equip them with the intellectual capabilities that could be harnessed both to conserve and stabilize social systems and to reform and subvert them. The processes of endless specialization and differentiation of roles that are inherent features of modern social systems enhance and enrich embourgeoisement. Embourgeoisement is not only about the growth and expansion of middle classes but also about the creation of numerous and varied critical social positions that require the knowledge and competence of the middle classes. Hence, to delineate the role of the middle classes in India we have to view social change from the perspective of embourgeoisement.1 Even as I want to focus on the role of the middle classes in this essay, I am aware that there is considerable ambiguity in the usage of the term “the middle class”. I am inclined to think that this ambiguity actually conveys the power of embourgeoisement. Everyone wants to be considered as belonging to the middle class nowadays. The rich often regard themselves as the middle class; certainly a Narayana Murthy or a Nandan Nilekani would prefer to consider themselves as quintessentially middle class even though they are big corporate leaders. Similarly, those belonging to the working class also consider themselves as belonging to the middle class which reflects their idea of a good life and/or betrays their attempts to “pass”. In the language of computer programming, just as the default program is essential to bring on to the computer screen the information that I wish to focus upon, embourgeoisement is the default program that is vitally connected to the scenes of the middle classes that are highlighted on the social screen. My study of the role of the middle classes would remain partial and fragmented unless I continually refer to the backup process of embourgeoisement that projects the middle classes prominently on the social scene. There is a cultural politics in belonging or in claiming



18

Chapter One

to belong to the middle classes and my focus on embourgeoisement draws me to this politics. Quite often the middle classes are projected as being apathetic to politics but even this “apathy” might turn out to be a powerful political stance that the middle classes adopt. Embourgeoisement in India has extended to almost all communities and classes, barring a few remote tribal communities and castes that have been pushed to the margin. We can today identify a middle class in almost every caste, tribe, and minority religious community. Embourgeoisement, which was earlier confined to urban centres, is rapidly affecting rural life as well. The character of social classes has morphed due to embourgeoisement. The social spaces occupied by the middle classes have expanded considerably because of the rapid growth of the services sector with an accent on knowledge based expertise; even traditional occupations and crafts are now coming under the regime of embourgeoisement. Professional designers offer new and more attractive designs for the craftsmen to create and trained marketing personnel ensure that the craftsmen get a good price for their creations. Social scientists have used the term “peasantry” to cover a broad spectrum of cultivating classes ranging from shift and burn agriculturists, landless agricultural labourers, tenants, small land owners, and even landowners who rely on hired labour. Notwithstanding such disparate meanings, a common attribute of the peasantry is its aspect of being an autonomous moral community proud of its resilience in the face of adversity and its traditions of defiance of arbitrary authority. Today, the peasants have become market dependent “farmers” prone to commit suicide in the face of economic hardship created by market uncertainties (Nagaraj 2008). Peasant movements are still strong in different parts of the country but their demands are more about seeking concessions and subsidies from the government thereby demonstrating that they act more as political pressure groups rather than as ideologically driven moral communities. Similarly, trade unions that are politically assertive and militant now are the white-collar unions of commercial banks rather than unions of industrial workers. There are stray incidents of militancy of industrial workers in the organized sector but capital intensive and technology intensive processes, new management practices, and the tacit withdrawal of support to trade unions by political parties have weakened the trade union movement of industrial workers. Workers in the informal sector are too scattered to be organized and in any case labour practices and working conditions are so varied in the informal sector that it is difficult to evolve a common agenda for collective mobilization.



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

19

Traditional crafts have also been transformed by modern designers who cater to global markets, as mentioned before. In cultural terms, embourgeoisement refers to convergence towards what are popularly known as middle class values and life styles. It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify a core set of traits as typical of middle classes because the process of embourgeoisement has to accommodate progressive differentiation of various knowledge based occupations and professions. Hence, it is safe to say that middle class cultures are supportive of knowledge based occupations and professions. Career-orientated work culture, valorization of education and training in general and of professional education and training in particular, stress on material success, acquisition of consumer goods and technological gadgets, planning for the future, family centric instrumentality, insularity, and a status quo orientation are features associated with typical middle class existence. But even as we can locate thin sediment of common cultural traits, there are baffling diversities that make it difficult to reduce the middle class to the rigours of class analysis, be it in the Marxist or in the Weberian tradition. The Bengali middle class with its Bhadralok legacy might distinguish itself for its refined tastes in music, art, and literature and its achievements in the academic world but this old middle class is now being challenged in West Bengal by a more aggressive class of rabble-rousers and political fixers who have scant respect for the life of the mind. Of course, the Bengali Bhadralok (middle class gentlemen) differs in tastes from the middle class in Punjab. Middle class Punjabis have contempt for people in “services” or white collar jobs because they value self-reliance and independence. Their life style is more outgoing and flamboyant than that of their Bengali counterparts. It is a well-known fact that several leading figures of the Dalit middle class are turning to Buddhist symbols and iconography, the practice of vipasana meditation, and other modes of asserting their distinctness. The more assertive younger generation among the Dalits now insists on valorizing beef eating in public just to challenge the sanskritic hegemony of the “upper” castes. The Muslims of Kerala insist on teaching Arabic to their children and on their women being covered in the burkha (a loose garment worn by Muslim women from head to feet) to join the cultural politics of difference triggered by embourgeoisement. India’s cultural diversity, which is constantly changing and evolving, is open to symbolic manipulation and manoeuvring and the middle classes, both those who are established and the new arrivals, engage in absorbing contests for status.



20

Chapter One

Several observers (Varma 2007) despise the consumerist, self-centred and insular life styles of the middle classes and link them to reactionary and right wing political trends in the country. But the middle class background of these intellectual critics considerably weakens their case. The middle classes have produced not just armchair critics of the middle class but also leaders of several social movements aiming to dismantle the status quo. This duality is a prominent feature of the middle classes, especially in India. The middle classes have also become models for emulation for the deprived sections of society. Emulation shows up in the widespread aspiration for white-collar urban jobs among rural youth. Reports of several commissions of enquiry set up to investigate inter-caste conflicts and atrocities against Dalits in Tamil Nadu point out that minor inter-caste tensions and conflicts that used to be sorted out at the village level, with elders from different castes acting as peacemakers, now flare up to engulf entire regions. This is attributed to the presence of unemployed educated youth in the villages who find it demeaning to work in agricultural fields. These young men have apparently become so sensitive to issues of caste dignity and caste identity that they use even minor episodes of perceived insults to their caste dignity to mobilize support from members of their caste in the neighbouring villages and towns and escalate them into major inter-caste confrontations leading to mass violence and bloodshed (Lakshmanan 2013). Embourgeoisement is associated with secularization, but the hope that the spread of modern science and technology and proliferation of whitecollar occupations would accelerate the diffusion of a secular, scientific temper has not been fulfilled. The rise of religious fundamentalist organisations that judiciously combined inputs from the instrumentality of modern science and technology with religious dogmas demonstrates that embourgeoisement is no guarantor of secularism. Nevertheless, the vocabulary of instrumental rationality and the culture it spawns is increasingly exposing fundamentalist beliefs as human constructions and interpretations rather than as divine pronouncements. Religious fundamentalism is also an instrumentalist pursuit of religious beliefs and practices. Although the salaried middle class became conspicuous when the British rulers created a modern army and set up modern schools and colleges to man the expanding bureaucracy, it is possible to identify an indigenous middle class that had evolved during pre-British days. Middle class occupations of scribes, accountants, administrative officers, teachers, doctors, architects, and engineers were prominent in urban areas in pre-



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

21

British India. Without these occupations India could not have sustained flourishing international commercial enterprises using sophisticated instruments of credit, merchants’ associations, and civic institutions such as that of nagar seths in Gujarat (Tripathi 2004). Today, the middle class has gained a new economic significance in India. Estimates of the size of the middle class vary, especially because of the process of embourgeoisement; even those who are regarded by economists as belonging to the poor and vulnerable sections nurture a self image of being middle class, as mentioned before. True, management experts urge that there are big markets to be tapped at the bottom of the social pyramid in India, but the absolute size of the middle class in India offers such an attractive market for global corporations that they do not have to worry about searching for markets hidden by poverty. If we follow the estimates of the National Commission on the Unorganised Sector popularly known as the Arjun Sengupta Commission, a staggering 80% of the Indian population is classified as poor and vulnerable (http:// nceuis.nic.in). Even then, the remaining 20% consists of more than 200 million people able to buy various sorts of consumer goods, including luxury goods. That is why even a minor shortfall in sugar production or in the output of onions in India would impact their prices internationally. Transnational corporations find India to be a particularly attractive market; manufacturers of luxury automobiles such as the Mercedes Benz find it relatively easy to sell their expensive cars in sufficiently large numbers to break even because even a fraction of 1% share of the 200 million strong middle class market is substantial enough to meet more than just their costs. We can identify three phases of embourgeoisement that are at work in contemporary India. The phase of embourgeoisement that occurred during the British rule of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries I regard as the first phase of embourgeoisement and using present-day terminology I refer to it as 1G (or first generation) embourgeoisement. 2G embourgeoisement refers to the process stretching from 1947 to 1991 – the era of state-dominated socialism. 3G embourgeoisement is about the post 1991 phase of liberal economic reforms. Today, the three generational phases are interacting with each other, especially the 2G and 3G phases, generating social flash points no doubt, but there are also indications that these phases are synergizing to evolve innovative solutions to emerging conflicts and contradictions.



22

Chapter One

1G Embourgeoisement By opening schools and colleges to impart western education through the English medium to Indians irrespective of their caste, ethnicity and religious background, British rule opened new secular spaces of social ranking for occupation by the emerging middle class of salaried employees and professionals. The new middle class was indeed a thin social layer estimated to have been around 2% of the population (Misra 1961). The new system of education valorized western science and technology, with its stress on rationality and empiricism along with the ideals of humanism, liberty, and equality as they evolved in Europe during the period of the Enlightenment. As is well known, this British policy was aimed at creating a class of “brown sahibs” who would acquire English tastes and sensibilities and become the big supporters of British rule in India. It opened up new spaces of authority and status to all Indians irrespective of their ascribed caste/community status no doubt, but it also made them acutely conscious of the inherent systemic defects in their social systems and traditions that reduced the Indians to the status of “subjects” of the British Empire. Besides instilling in them an urge to engage in social reforms, western education inspired them to conceive of new social, political, and cultural projects that subsequently converged to challenge British rule itself. The new class of western educated Indians consisted of three distinct segments. There was the dominant segment of what we today call the savarna castes (upper castes) (in Bengal known as the Bhadralok – middle class gentlemen) that zealously took to projects of social reform to get rid of what they perceived as superstitious practices of Hinduism and the evils of the caste system. This segment gradually switched its focus from movements for social reform to movements for self governance as it gradually realized that the civilizing mission of the British was only an ideological veil over the systematic drain of India’s wealth which was impoverishing India to enrich the mother country. Subsequently, under Gandhi’s leadership, these projects for self-governance gradually got converted into a full fledged nationalist struggle determined to free India from the yoke of British rule. The nationalist projects that were conceived ranged from reviving the glory of the ancient Indian civilisation and recreating ram rajya and its other Hindu equivalents to projects of national liberation inspired by ideas of individual liberty and democracy and of variants of socialism. These projects also inspired a renaissance in arts and literature and some remarkable achievements in science. Inspired by the new wave of nationalism, a class of nationalistic industrialists arose that



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

23

not only supported the national struggle but also demonstrated India’s indigenous capability to forge ahead in the field of industrial enterprise and international commerce. In “peninsular India” – a colonial term referring to the then Bombay and Madras Presidencies and the neighbouring princely states – western education threw up a new segment of the middle class drawn from the Backward Classes (mostly referring to non-Brahmin peasant castes) and Depressed Classes (today’s Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes). The ideas of liberty, equality, and democracy taught in the new schools and colleges inspired students drawn from these classes to challenge the hegemony of Brahmins and stir up self respect movements that exposed the oppressions and inequities inherent in the caste system. The leaders of these movements saw the British rule as liberating, at least in part, because it made them aware that the discriminations and indignities that they had suffered could indeed be rectified by overturning the caste system by accessing new opportunities for upward social mobility opened up by western education. The Satyashodhak (search for truth) movement launched by Mahatma Phule of Satara, Chattrapati Shahu Maharaj of Kolhapur’s initiatives to uplift the backward and oppressed castes, and Ayyankali’s anti-caste movement in the princely state of Travancore were the late nineteenth century harbingers of Backward Classes movements for reservations of seats in educational institutions and in the bureaucracy that met with considerable support from the British rulers as well as local princes in the early twentieth century. This segment of the middle class prioritized social reform over independence because of its suspicions that independence without substantial reform of the caste system would bring Brahmin hegemony through the back door. A third segment of the middle class consisted of western educated Muslims who put across the two-nation thesis and wanted to carve out an independent state of Pakistan for the Muslims. This segment, under the leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah compelled the Partition of India even as the Congress Party’s goal of freeing India from British rule was succeeding. One of the major achievements of 1G embourgeoisement is the Constitution of independent India, which on 26 January 1950, formally inaugurated the Republic of India. Some of the major features of the Constitution, namely the emphasis on the rights of the individual combined with special provisions for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the Backward Classes, protection of weaker sections of society, provisions for the collective rights of linguistic and religious minorities, federalism, the separation of the three wings of the state and the system of



24

Chapter One

Parliamentary democracy founded on the principle of universal adult franchise represent the consensus evolved by the children of first generation embourgeoisement. It provided the template that shaped the egalitarian ideologies that came to the forefront in the second phase of embourgeoisement and contributed to the task of nation building in India.

2G Embourgeoisement To grasp the impact of 2G embourgeoisement, it is instructive to contrast India’s experience as an independent nation with that of Pakistan. In Pakistan, as the military dominated the process of embourgeoisement, the stakes in nation building were confined to an urban middle class that gradually lost its influence in shaping the hegemonic culture of the nation. In India, the stress on democracy and on egalitarianism gradually widened the base of the middle class thereby reinforcing embourgeoisement. More importantly, the emerging middle classes have continually extended the discourse of equality from class and caste egalitarianism to women’s rights and the rights of minorities. 2G embourgeoisement is, however, about egalitarianism that shifted its axis from class to castes/communities. As mentioned earlier, the politics of the Backward Classes and of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes had emerged in peninsular India way back in the late nineteenth century but under the dispensation of postIndependence democracy, political competition for backwardness was accentuated which in turn accelerated embourgeoisement. As people belonging to certain castes and communities attained middle class status by taking advantage of reservations policies, persons belonging to the other castes in the neighbourhood felt deprived and would initiate and join movements to get included or reclassified to the category they preferred. What is remarkable about this phase of embourgeoisement is the wide range of innovative narratives of egalitarianism that emerged in India. The gradual shift from the vision of a classless and casteless society of Nehruvian socialism to notions of equality foregrounding the interests of backward classes and oppressed castes, the elaboration of Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts into a philosophy of social justice, and the political strategy of Dalit-Bahujan alliance as articulated by Kanshi Ram are indeed uniquely Indian interpretations of the ideology of egalitarianism (Panini 2014: 306ff). Their Indianness lay in the stress on equality between castes and communities rather than in the form of equality of individuals. Individuals became emblems of their respective castes or communities even when they made self-conscious attempts to transcend such imposed identities. Even in the secular politics of poverty eradication, policies targeted individuals



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

25

as representing their “households”. The ideology of peasant insurgency advocated by the Naxalbari/Maoist movement used to stand apart from the main discourse of egalitarianism but even here tribal/caste identities were extensively used for mobilization. Today, the Maoists sympathize with even Islamic jihadists and regard them as subalterns ranged against the domination of capital. Maoists consider corporate capital supported by the savarna (upper) Hindu castes – a phrase popular in the Dalit-Bahujan discourse – as their “class” enemies (Banerjee 2013). The leaders of this movement, let it be noted, are the orphaned children of 2G embourgeoisement. The unique feature of 2G embourgeoisement is the widespread support it created for the ideology of egalitarianism. It is not surprising that given the poverty and cumulative inequalities of caste, variants of egalitarianism cast in terms of caste/tribe identities became effective in mobilising popular support. Among these variants the Dalit/Bahujan thesis of social justice emerged as the most powerful lever of the politics of egalitarianism. Its deconstruction of the Hindu category and its reconstruction in terms of a minority consisting of savarna or Manuvadi castes also contributed powerfully in recruiting minority religious communities to its alternative vision of nation building. What is surprising, however, is that it had the tacit acceptance of the capitalists, especially of the new generation of entrepreneurs. As is well known, the Bombay club of leading industrialists endorsed the dominant role of the state. Even the new generation of business leaders that the emerging nation threw up were enthused by Nehruvian socialism to such an extent that the American anthropologist Milton Singer wrote an essay on the industrial leaders of Madras with the subtitle “The Hindu Ethic and the Spirit of Socialism” thereby celebrating the socialist twist to embourgeoisement (Singer 1972). The Forum for Free Enterprise in Bombay and subsequently the Swantantra Party expressly opposed state dominated socialism for abridging individual freedom and free enterprise but they could not acquire sufficient political traction. Corporate interests preferred to keep the Forum at a distance because they did not want to incur the wrath of the government which was controlling the commanding heights of the economy and risk being denied the premiums of quotas and licences that the regime of socialist controls offered. The Indian versions of egalitarianism played a crucial cohesive role in nation building. They converted the marginalized and oppressed castes and tribes into stakeholders in the project of nation building. This project did not always work as some separatist movements including the Naxal movement or the nationalist movements of the north east of India bear witness. But caste/community based egalitarian values created the



26

Chapter One

hegemony that could justify the use of military force in suppressing these movements. After all, such military action could be condoned as exceptional deviations from the professed values of equality and liberty dictated by the larger national interest!

3G Embourgeoisement The 3G phase that we are now witnessing has been unleashed by liberal economic reforms and the consequent exposure of the Indian economy to global market forces. A distinct feature of this phase is the emergence of the Aam Aadmi (common man) phenomenon. The Congress Party gave currency to the term Aam Aadmi during its election campaign of 2004 to counter the boastful BJP slogan of “Shining India” as the legacy of the 1999–2004 NDA regime. The Congress party contended that the NDA regime had created a shining India only for the elite and promised that if voted to power it would ensure that the fruits of development would reach the Aam Aadmi, the ordinary citizen. This signalled the shift in political discourse. Distributive schemes planned by governments had to cater to both the poor and downtrodden and the not so poor sections. Implicit in the Aam Aadmi slogan was the endorsement of economic liberalization policies of the previous government; it held out the promise that the fruits of faster economic growth will be made available to all rather than allowing the rich to corner all the benefits as the NDA regime had done. The slogan also tacitly suggested that the life styles of comfort and luxury displayed by the electronic media are worthy of emulation. Glittering shopping malls and multiplex cinemas, opulent five star hotels, high rise business centres and corporate buildings, shimmering airports of glass and steel with their alluring shopping arcades and food courts, flyovers sweeping over urban congestions, streamlined highways,2 and luxury condominiums developed by private builders are the visible symbols of development and even those living in the slums tucked away in the interstices of urban spaces aspire for them. 3 The Economist, in one of its recent articles, referred to this explosion of aspirations in the country as the big challenge that the party coming to power in the 2014 elections would have to confront (Rosenfield 2014). The 3G phase of embourgeoisement has witnessed the democratization of desire (Ghosh 2011: 153ff). It is now difficult to persuade the poor to vote for you just because your party has ensured that the necessities of food, clothing, and shelter are met. Indira Gandhi won the election from Chikmagalur constituency in Karnataka in 1978 – soon after her and her party’s ignominious defeat in 1977 – because the poor people of



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

27

Chikmagalur associated her as the spirit behind the poverty eradication policies that Devaraja Urs, the then Chief Minister of Karnataka, had implemented effectively in Karnataka. Regarding Indira Gandhi as their saviour they lined the streets to greet her when she came to the constituency to canvas for votes. Now such loyalty and gratitude cannot be taken for granted by meeting the basic needs of the poor. The poor want to eat the Maggie noodles that they see cheerful mothers lay out for their spoilt children in television advertisements. They are no longer satisfied that governments provide them with their basic needs. To a large extent this is the consequence of political parties outdoing each other during elections by promising freebies such as colour televisions, electric mixer grinders, bicycles, and laptops to all if they are voted to power. Politics has also changed the idea of basic needs and blurred the distinction between luxuries and necessities. No wonder then that the Chief Minister of the newly formed Congress government in Karnataka was exploring means by which foreign made liquor could be made available to the poor at affordable prices soon after his elevation!4 In fact, one of the leading Dalit intellectuals of the state wrote an eloquent article in Kannada supporting the right of the poor to their daily quota of whisky! Another feature of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon is the gratitude deficit. Sam Pitroda recently made a revealing and insightful comment in an interview in which he was projecting Rahul Gandhi as a sensitive and visionary leader. He was upset that although the Congress party had done much for the poor, there was not much recognition of its contribution. It was the Congress party that was instrumental in connecting far-flung and isolated areas of the country with the national mainstream through the telecom revolution, but people remain dissatisfied, he said, because they now want to have access to sufficient bandwidth!5 This rising level of dissatisfaction is an indication of new forms of deprivation. Information technology and digital communications have expanded the horizons of economic opportunities and improved productivity. Facebook, Twitter accounts and WhatsApp have become gateways to global educational and economic opportunities for young men and women located in the remoter regions of the world. Internet access has promoted the rapid growth of local businesses and created new opportunities in the tourism and hospitality sector. Local peasants can access knowledge and information that enhance productivity and market reach. Internet access has converted localized movements against oppression and tyranny into global issues. In contrast, remote regions that are denied digital access suffer the pains of intended or unintended exclusion. They remain deprived when others are seemingly freeing



28

Chapter One

themselves from their shackles of deprivation, which is a new form of injustice that conventional approaches to inequality do not address. Demands have been made in several forums of the United Nations to declare the right to internet access with sufficient bandwidth as a basic human right.6 Conventional approaches to combat inequality such as the reservations policy do not suffice any longer. The Aam Aadmi phenomenon is also the consequence of the own goal that the Congress Party scored against itself.7 One of the first things that the UPA government did after coming to power was to usher in the Right to Information Act of 2005. This Act conferred on citizens the right to ask for and obtain information within a reasonable period of time about the functioning of the government. It empowered people to get information on their applications and petitions and also on how funds earmarked for projects are getting spent. The Act gave birth to a new kind of political activist who uses the RTI to unearth corruption and inefficiencies in the government. It is reported that Arvind Kejriwal, one of the founders of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), came to the crusade against corruption through the route of RTI activism. One of the factors that contributed to the Aam Aadmi phenomenon is the public interest litigation by some prominent lawyers and political leaders that led to the dramatic exposure – during the second phase of the UPA regime – of staggering and mind boggling scales of corruption in the government. Scams involving estimated losses to the public exchequer of a few lakh crores of rupees in what has now come to be known as the 2G scam and the media exposure of the secret Radia Tapes 8 revealed the sinister nexus between politicians and big corporations that influenced crucial ministerial appointments and allotments of public resources. The Aam Aadmi phenomenon was exemplified and enhanced by the spectacular success of Anna Hazare’s indefinite fast that began on 16 August 2011 to get the Parliament to pass the bill on the establishment of the Lok Pal, an empowered body to monitor and investigate charges of corruption against all public servants including the Prime Minister, the Members of Parliament, and government officials. Initially he was not permitted to hold the fast at J.P. Park in New Delhi, his venue of choice. The government clamped orders prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons in New Delhi and arrested him on the ground that he would be violating the prohibitory order even before he was to commence his fast. Undaunted by this repressive measure he began his hunger strike in the jail itself by refusing food or water. As news spread of his arrest, people started pouring in from all corners of Delhi to the precincts of Tihar jail to express their solidarity with him and to raise slogans against the



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

29

government. As the crowd started swelling, and as there was no sign of abatement of popular sentiments, the government backtracked and offered to release him unconditionally but he refused to leave the jail till his demand to continue his hunger strike at the venue of his choice was fulfilled. The government succumbed to his demand, and even allowed him to hold the fast in Ram Lila Ground, a larger place for congregations than the J.P. Park. This in turn escalated his campaign. In several cities of the country, spontaneous demonstrations erupted in sympathy. Meanwhile crowds at the Ram Lila grounds, the venue of the hunger strike, kept swelling day by day and the working of the administrative machinery was slowed down if not brought to a standstill, not just in New Delhi but in other parts of the country as well. Anna’s health started deteriorating and he had to resist intense pressures from the government keen on an honourable compromise. Stunned by his unwavering stand and fearing that if he died fasting the unrest would spread to the whole country, the government surrendered and agreed to all the three conditions he had stipulated. The government called a special session of the Parliament to discuss the Lok Pal bill on 27 July and Anna broke his fast on 28 July, twelve days after he began his fast. Anna’s campaign signalled the erosion of the patronage of the state and of the status of the Parliament. Reacting to Anna Hazare’s hunger strike, the MP Lalu Prasad Yadav regretted that Anna had violated the sanctity of Indian democracy by challenging the notion of the “supremacy of the Parliament”.9 The stature of the Parliament was indeed eroded as Kejriwal demonstrated subsequently by openly accusing 162 MPs including 14 ministers of being corrupt and/or rapists. When he was issued a privilege notice for passing derogatory and indecent remarks on the members of the Parliament in March 2012 he refused to apologize, claiming it was the tainted MPs who had insulted the Parliament, not he.10 Even Ratan Tata, one of the more respected industrial leaders of the country, concurred and agreed that corruption had become pervasive. He also ruefully complained that crony capitalism was flourishing in India, which was an indirect confirmation of the charges levelled by Team Anna. The Anna campaign was an instance of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon at work. It is the forceful assertion by the middle classes of their civil rights. The intention of the UPA’s regime might have been to empower the poor to stake their claims to full citizenship and to gain firm guarantees from the government on their rights to livelihood, but the regime enthused the middle classes who poured out into the streets to demand their dues as well. They succeeded also because they moved out of their comfort zones to mingle with the urban poor and incorporate their demands in their wider



30

Chapter One

agenda of civil rights. Modern media also contributed to the success of this campaign, presenting it at least temporarily as a mass movement. One effect of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon is the attempt made by the UPA government to control the damage caused by revelations of corruption by presenting itself as the supporter of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon. We all know that Rahul Gandhi, the Vice President of the Congress Party, tore up the ordinance that sought to shield convicted MPs and MLAs from the Supreme Court’s judgment disqualifying them. 11 Subsequently the proposed amendment to exempt political parties from the ambit of the RTI act was also withdrawn. These moves were the consequence of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon that 3G embourgeoisement generated. The UPA could not afford to antagonize the Aam Aadmi by appearing to be hesitant in supporting the anti-corruption campaign. A dominant feature of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon is its ideological eclecticism. The Anna Hazare campaign attracted anarchists who wanted to dismantle the corrupt state as well as conservatives who believed in a strong unitary state. 12 Sadhus and spiritual gurus who considered homosexuality as a disease rubbed shoulders with young men and women who had participated in slut marches, Gandhians mingled with RSS sympathizers, people who sympathized with Kashmiri separatists shared the podium with staunch “patriots” who considered Kashmir as an integral part of India, and socialists of various hues worked together with liberals who extolled the virtues of the free market to contribute to the success of the campaign. The Anna Hazare campaign evolved a single point agenda that transcended ideologies. Team Anna’s main thesis is that corruption in the political system is the source of all the evils prevailing in India. If corruption is put down with a firm hand and the black money that has been illegally stashed in foreign banks is reclaimed, India will be sloshing with investible funds for accelerated economic growth, which in turn would expand employment opportunities and eradicate poverty almost in one stroke. Team Anna believed that ideologies acted as shields for selfserving politicians, government officials and businessmen to collude in the loot of the public wealth. It argued that corruption breeds inefficiency: delays in implementing decisions are one method of creating artificial scarcity that would boost premiums in the black market. It attributed the rape and ill treatment of women to corruption; the incidence of rape and sexual harassment of women is going up because the police have a vested interest in protecting the rapists to extract protection money from them. Price rises occur because of the unholy alliance of politicians and bureaucrats with big business houses. The poor are cheated of their rights



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

31

to food and shelter because of corruption. To eliminate this pervasive corruption, a powerful Lok Pal is required, with untrammelled investigative powers to bring the corrupt to book and to bring back black money stashed abroad. 13 Then only will there be genuine all round development and the rights of all the citizens protected. When poverty is eradicated, political parties that have been perpetuating poverty to create their vote banks will lose their hold. If only the state has the will to root out corruption, caste politics in the name of promoting the interests of deprived and oppressed castes and tribes and the politics of communalism that exploits religious sentiments, will disappear because all castes and communities will share the fruits of development. Social scientists might regard this thesis as a pseudo ideology, because they prefer to view corruption as the effect of social inequality rather than as its cause, but then it is a pseudo ideology that has gained political traction, at least in the short run. The birth of this pseudo ideology is partly the effect of growing disenchantment with egalitarian ideologies that dominated the 2G phase. Egalitarianism of the 2G phase promised mere representational equality. While the reservations strategy might rectify systemic injustice and inequities and open new opportunities for upward mobility, it promises only longue durée equality stretching over generations. That is why the creamy layer argument is resisted as unjust by the deprived and oppressed castes and communities – because the creamy layer produces leaders who have the resources to fight injustices in the system. The reservations strategy however, implies that those who are not endowed with capabilities to benefit from reservations can only hope that their children or grandchildren will reap the benefits while those outside the ambit of reservations consider it as a strategy of reverse discrimination and repression. In contrast, the Aam Aadmi phenomenon promises a new revolution that seems to fulfil everyone’s aspirations. The Prime Ministerial candidate of the BJP has studiously avoided the issue of reservations by declaring that if his party comes to power the floodgates of economic growth and development will be opened to such an extent that reservations will lose any meaning. Everyone will not only get a job but also prosper with development taking precedence. 14 Moreover, for how long can you expect people to wait to savour the regime of desire that the globalized economy opens up? The regime of rights ushered in by 3G embourgeoisement articulates the rights of women as well. During the 2G phase, the women’s issue was supposed to be accommodated through the extension of reservations for women in legislative bodies. The bill on women’s reservations met with



32

Chapter One

stiff resistance, ironically by the stalwarts who were in the forefront of the movement for Backward Class reservations at the national level. The Parliament has been engaged with the bill since 1996 and there is no guarantee that it will become a law any time soon. In the meanwhile women’s issues have become prominent in the 3G phase; rape and sexual harassment have become the metonyms of women’s oppression, particularly among the urban middle classes. As middle class women succeed in their struggle against familial repression and as they come out of their homes to seek new job opportunities that are opening up, they also confront a world of escalating depravation. Cultural displacement caused by forced migration and the role of modern media that morph women into sex objects have opened up new spaces for rape and sexual harassment. New feminist discourses have compelled the media to catalogue and amplify incidents of rape and sexual harassment as a violation of human rights of women. The spontaneous eruption of popular anger in Delhi at the brutal Nirbhaya rape of 16 December 2012 and subsequent demonstrations against the government, demanding immediate arrests and punishment of the guilty, resulted in the adoption of a new law on sexual harassment. 15 It transfers the onus of proof onto the male offender and imposes severe penalties including the death penalty on the guilty. The law on sexual harassment brings to the surface the conundrums of 3G embourgeoisement and in fact interrogates the ideology of egalitarianism itself. The seeming victory that urban middle class women have achieved in the context of rape and sexual harassment turns out to be superficial when confronted with caste/community prejudices that repress women. A recent news report of a traditional Jat Khap allowing inter-caste marriage appears to be a progressive step, but a close reading of the report shows that the diktat on gotra exogamy persists. The loosening of caste endogamy is only done to help young men who are unable to find suitable brides within their own community, possibly due to extremely skewed sex ratio among the Jats. Other diktats banning young women from acquiring mobile phones persist. Similarly, the orgy of violence let loose on the Dalits of Dharmapuri district of Tamilnadu because a Dalit man in the village dared to marry an “upper caste” woman, or the protests against “love jihad”16 in the coastal towns of Karnataka and Kerala by Hindu and Christian organizations which were echoed even by the Communist Party Chief Minister of Kerala, Mr Achyutanandan, 17 are instances of the continued obduracy of those favouring caste and community ideologies and interests in denying women their rights. The liberating forces of 3G embourgeoisement are likely to whip up caste and community backlashes that might ultimately even more severely abridge women’s rights. In this



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

33

context, there is little hope that laws will be changed to accommodate the civil rights of gays, lesbians, and transsexuals. Mulayam Singh, the leader of the Samajwadi Party, recently commented that the new law on sexual harassment was too severe on “boys” who make “mistakes” sometimes; this is an early sign of reaction building up against the liberating effects on women of some of the trends set off by 3G embourgeoisement.18 Women’s rights 19 weaken caste/community solidarities and open the doors to individuation, no doubt, but the social logic of caste/communitybased egalitarianism of the 2G phase is also moving in the direction of fragmentation of these identities. The demand for quotas within reservations quotas, competing claims to be reclassified to the categories that enjoy more privileges, along with the silent resistance of the beneficiaries to the inclusion of other castes/communities, have taken the 2G version of egalitarianism in new directions. Initiatives to promote the idea of diversity and affirmative action in public institutions and demands for extension of reservations to the private sector seek to revive the spirit of egalitarianism of the 2G phase20 which seems to have become dormant under the onslaught of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon as some acute observers have recently noted.21 The rhetoric of caste has been drowned in the noise generated by the regime of rights, but “secularism” continues to be a catchy idea by foregrounding the rights of minority communities to their collective identity. The assertion of women’s rights, let alone the rights of gays and lesbians, might generate a severe backlash of communalism and fundamentalism sooner rather than later. The egalitarian discourse of 3G embourgeoisement has obfuscated growing disparities generated by globalisation. The number of billionaires in India, which was 27 in 2013, has increased to 52. That a mere 0.00001% of India’s population accounts for a quarter of the gross domestic product is an eloquent commentary on the steep inequality that prevails under the 3G phase.22 3G embourgeoisement has made visible a class of the super-rich that has seceded from the plebeians. Members of this class are in an exclusive global network and hop across world’s metropolises with ease, live in gated communities, work in exclusive corporate offices, send their children to exclusive schools in air conditioned buses, go to work in fancy automobiles, relax in posh clubs and restaurants and spend their holidays in exotic resorts tucked away in far off mountains and beaches to come close to nature. The Aam Aadmi has almost dropped out of their networks of interaction. Along with the trend of secession, 3G embourgeoisement has set off class differentiation at the bottom of the social pyramid thereby undermining the very idea of the Aam Aadmi. As mentioned earlier, the



34

Chapter One

Sengupta Commission report acknowledges the reduction in the incidence of poverty but at the same time highlights the slippery slopes on which the vulnerable sections, constituting about 50% of the population, are perched. The Socio Economic and Caste Census of Rural India of 2011 finds it necessary to grade deprivation levels to evolve a ranking of households for inclusion under the BPL (Below the Poverty Line) category that require special treatment. This is indeed a commentary on the varieties of poverty and vulnerabilities that prevail in India. It recognises that a woman headed household is deprived, but a woman headed household belonging to the scheduled caste is more deprived. A rag picker’s prospects take a beating when technological advances replace the more expensive metallic components of gadgets with less expensive and lighter materials. Poverty also keeps the poor divided. The residents of Annawadi easily utter falsehoods and abet the police in doctoring evidence against their neighbours if they perceive that by doing so they gain an edge in their struggle for survival (Boo 2012). This underclass is denied the luxury of collective mobilization that some Dalit castes and minority communities might enjoy. Hence it is doubtful that the regime of rights that 3G embourgeoisement has unfurled would in itself succeed in actually empowering the poor and the vulnerable. In fact this regime is in danger of turning out to be a fraud committed by political parties to retain their hold over power. Who is then the Aam Aadmi that the politicians talk about? Like the cap of the Aam Aadmi Party, does the term fit whoever that claims the status? The Aam Aadmi Party president, Kejriwal once punned on the Congress Party’s notion of Aam Aadmi as the “Mango”23 people, but the pun turns out to be a biting comment on the trends let loose by 3G embourgeoisement.

Conclusion An overall assessment of 3G embourgeoisement points to a radical departure from the social trends that gained prominence in the 2G phase. Ideological eclecticism and the emergence of the pseudo ideology of corruption, the expanding regime of rights that seeks to redress the asymmetry between the state and its citizens in favour of the latter, the outbreak of new forms of deprivation combined with depravation and the surge of middle classes in politics are all features of the Aam Aadmi phenomenon unleashed by the forces of globalisation. 3G embourgeoisement has given a new meaning to egalitarianism; the Aam Aadmi turns out to be a figment of political imagination precisely because almost everyone can claim that status. We have to evolve new indices of



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

35

deprivation and depravation to grasp the evolving idea of egalitarianism. Egalitarianism of the 3G phase goes beyond the bounds of meeting the basic needs of the poor. It has to come to terms with the Aam Aadmi’s aspirations for the good life as defined by the global market.24 Even as the Aam Aadmi phenomenon signals a radical departure from the socialist trends set off by 2G embourgeoisement, it should be noted that the appeal of the ideologies that dominated the 2G phase are still powerful. Peasant movements demanding various sorts of concessions and subsidies to farmers, tribal movements resisting eviction from agricultural land and forests, the tacit endorsement if not sympathy that Maoist causes have gained among urban intellectuals, agitations for the extension of the reservations policy to private sector enterprises and the escalation of communal tensions offer evidence that ideological conflicts of the 2G phase are still simmering. It once again raises the question of prioritization: should we prioritize social revolution over economic growth or should we reverse it in favour of growth this time? 25 The social revolution set off by embourgeoisement and its sheer democratic compulsions pose an impediment to market friendly growth in India. At the same time, there seems to be no option but to rely on the markets to generate the surpluses to meet the explosion of social, cultural and economic aspirations generated by the Aam Aadmi phenomenon. There is a strong temptation to follow the example of some of the more prosperous ASEAN countries and lean towards authoritarianism to ensure untrammelled growth. In India there is no guarantee that it would work on a national scale, if we go by the example of the 1975 emergency. Moreover, despite numerous institutional deficiencies in the state structure, the institutionalization of democratic values over the last seven decades coupled with the virtual spaces that have been opened up by the digital media work against authoritarian trends both of the radical left variety and of the right wing fascist variety. The Aam Aadmi phenomenon poses a new intellectual challenge as well. It has breached Partha Chatterjee’s compartmentalization of civil society constituted by the middle class and the underclass, if only temporarily. The Aam Aadmi turns out to be a holdall term which like the Aam Aadmi Party’s cap fits everyone and hence no one. Even as its account of corruption as the mother of all the problems that the country faces turns out to be a pseudo explanation, it shows a way by which the state can combine market friendly growth with the demands made by the regime of rights. It demands reconfiguration of the state to strike at the roots of crony capitalism so that the rent that was being skimmed out of



36

Chapter One

the economy is invested in enhancing productivity and expanding employment opportunities.

Notes 

1

I am aware that the term “bourgeoisie” also refers to the capitalist class in the social sciences literature, but in my usage it refers to the middle classes. 2 Lalu Prasad Yadav, the leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, promised his electorate that if he came to power he would build roads smoother than Hema Malini’s cheeks! See: http://www.samachar.com/why-are-politicians-obsessedwith-hema-malini-s-cheeks-nfgqNhhbegj.html. He has subsequently disowned the remark attributed to him. 3 Katherine Boo in her grim narrative on Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai, poignantly voices the filmstar-struck fantasies of opulence that underlie their visions of good life into which they want to escape. 4 See the report in the newspaper Deccan Herald: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/33307/state-may-produce-iml-provide.html 5 See Sam Pitroda’s interview in https://in.news.yahoo.com/indian-democracysocial-inclusion-being-challenged-polls-sam-103904425.html 6 http://broadband.about.com/od/International/a/United-Nations-Broadband-AccessIs-A-Basic-Human-Right.htm 7 It is an own goal both in the sense of triggering processes that exposed the corruption that the UPA government had sheltered and in the sense that the RTI could be used to get information on political parties themselves. 8 Radia tapes refer to the secret records of telephone conversations that corporate facilitator Ms Nira Radia had with several prominent journalists, political leaders, and business leaders. The Central Bureau of Investigation had recorded these conversations while pursuing one of its routine investigations. These tapes were leaked to the media, creating a big political storm. 9 MP Lalu Prasad’s Yadav’s speech in Hindi in the Parliament on 27 August 2011. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BShHZP_7Hh0 10 See http://news.oneindia.in/2012/03/30/kejriwal-stays-defiant-says-corrupt-mpsinsulted-parl.html 11 See http://www.business-standard.com/article/politics/rahul-gandhi-s-war-cry-tearthe-ordinance-and-throw-it-away-113092700395_1.htmll 12 Arvind Kejriwal is the leader of such anarchists. See his book Swaraj (HarperCollins India, 2012). 13 Some observers have cautioned that the creation of a super ombudsman with power to interrogate even the Prime Minister might usher in an extreme form of authoritarianism. Besides, it also raises the question of who will monitor the Lok Pal. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also been airing his view that anticorruption legislation might erode the morale of government servants because bona fide mistakes made by them might be mistaken as “colourable exercise of power”. Prime Minister’s Speech at the 19th Conference of CBI and State Anti Corruption Bureaux, 10 October 2012. See



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

37



http://www.pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=88292 14 See “Caste Based Reservation by Centre Threat to Nation: Narendra Modi” at http://post.jagran.com/Castebased-reservation-by-Centre-threat-to-nationNarendra-Modi-1325758057 and http://www.firstpost.com/narendra-modi/video/exclusive-narendra-modis-viewson-caste-based-reservation-in-india/i0q7ZEeZhB1363062A11.html 15 Some feminists read this feminism as biased. They complain that the Khairalanji atrocity and rape of women did not figure so prominently in the media because Khairalanji is in a remote rural hinterland and because the victims belonged to a Dalit family. See A. Tetlumbe, Khairalanji: A Strange and Bitter Cup (Navayana Publishers, 2008). 16 Love jihad refers to popular perceptions of Hindu and Christian organizations of a programme launched by Muslim men to seduce Hindu women by falling in love with them with the intention of converting them to Islam. Reacting to news reports of love jihad in Kerala and coastal Karnataka, the police in both the States did launch investigations but could not come up with credible evidence in support of the complainants. 17 See “Kerala CM criticized for speaking out against ‘love jihad’”, Economic Times (27 July 2010) at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-07-27 /news/27572286_1_love-jihad-love-jihad-hindu 18 See http://news.outlookindia.com/items.aspx?artid=836620 (10 April 2014). Later, Mulayam Singh Yadav clarified his position by stating that the law on sexual harassment could be misused to harass men, just as the law on dowry (or for that matter the law on atrocities against the SCs and STs) could be misused. This also raises the more important question of whether egalitarianism of the Indian variety ultimately ends up making some more equal than others, an issue that I have deliberately refrained from exploring in this paper. 19 I am deliberately not referring to “gender rights”, which also include the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals which have been denied by the Supreme Court even as it has recently recognized the transgender as a separate sex. 20 See the Bhopal Conference: “The Bhopal Declaration” adopted unanimously by the Bhopal Conference: Charting a New Course for Dalits for the Twenty first Century, held at Bhopal 12–13 January 2002: http://www.ambedkar.org/News/TheBhopalDeclaration.htm (accessed June 2013) and S. Thorat and N. Kumar (eds), In Search of Inclusive Policy (Jaipur: Rawat Publishers, 2008). See also the recommendations in the Report of the Experts Group to Examine and Determine the Structure and Functions of An Equal Opportunities Commission set up by the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Government of India, in Equal Opportunities Commission: What, Why and How? (2008). 21 Although the calculus of caste still matters and appeals invoking caste identities are still exploited by politicians, caste based egalitarian rhetoric was muted in the 2014 general elections. See Suhrit Parthasarathy “The Politics of Quota and Merit”, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-politics-of-quota-and-merit/article592 2949.ece 22 See Randeep Ramesh, “The Rise of the Super Rich in India”, http://www.dawn.com/news/504158/rise-of-super-rich-in-india, November 2009.



38

Chapter One



23 In Hindi Aam connotes the common and the ordinary but it also signifies the mango fruit. See http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/mango-people-coming-backto-haunt-robert-vadra-claims-arvind-kejriwal-277547 24 Soon after assuming office as the Chief Minister of Karnataka in 2013, Mr Siddaramiah was exploring the possibility of bringing down the price of good quality foreign liquor to the rural people. It will not be surprising that the right to good quality whisky might be included in future programmes that empower the poor. See http://www.deccanherald.com/content/333079/state-may-produce-imlprovide.html 25 The recent controversy over the right to food security triggered a lively controversy between Amartya Sen who argued that diverting funds directly to the poor would promote economic growth whereas Jagdish Bhagwati emphasized the growth first approach. See Arvind Panagariya at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Noble-intentionsignoble-outcomes/articleshow/22821338.cms

References Banerjee, Sumanta. 2013. “The Left and Political Islam”, Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 48, No. 13 (30 March), pp. 44–45. Boo, Katherine. 2012. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, Delhi: Penguin Books. Chatterjee, Partha. 2008. “Democracy and Economic Transformation in India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 43, No.16 (19 April), pp. 53–62. Ghosh, Biswajit. 2011. “Cultural Changes and Challenges in the Era of Globalization: The Case of India”, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp.153–175. Goldthorpe, John H., David Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer and Jennifer Platt. 1969. The Affluent Worker in the Class Structure, Volume 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers. Lakshmanan, C. 2013. National Seminar on Interrogating the Report of ‘Judicial’ Enquiry Commissions on Caste Violence in Tamil Nadu, Madras: Institute of Development Studies. Misra, B.B. 1961. The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nagaraj, K. 2008. Farmers’ Suicides in India: Magnitudes, Trends and Spatial Patterns, Chennai: Bharathi Puthakalayam.



Embourgeoisement and the Middle Classes in India

39



Panini, M. N. 2014. “The Pursuit of Equality in India”, in Yogendra Singh (ed.), Indian Sociology, Volume 3: Development and Change, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 306-360. Report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, Government of India, at http://nceuis.nic.in retrieved on October 15, 2013. Rosenfield, Joshua. 2014. “Listen: How India’s ‘Politics of Aspirations’ Are Shaping its Elections”, The Economist (April 10). Singer, Milton. 1972. “Industrial Leadership, Hindu Ethic and the Spirit of Socialism”, in Singer, When a Great Tradition Modernises: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilisation, New York: Praeger. Tripathi, Dwijendra. 2004. The Oxford History of Indian Business, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, Chapter 2. Varma, Pavan. 2007. The Great Indian Middle Class, New Delhi: Penguin India.



CHAPTER TWO MIDDLE CLASS HISTORICAL MOORINGS: CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES MADHURI RAIJADA

Introduction Mr Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion says, “I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle class morality”. This paper proposes to examine the relevance of this quotation with respect to the urban middle class in India in the context of socio-politico-economic transformations that have taken place in the post-Independence years. The resultant transformation of the Indian middle class will be deliberated in three phases in this paper, viz., the middle class at the time of Independence, during the pre-globalization era and in the current postglobalization period. The emphasis will be on markers that help explain the changing composition of the middle class, its ideologies and values, its aspirations and economic-political orientations and the part played by caste in this process. The factors responsible for the paradigm shift in the markers and orientations of India’s middle class will be examined to find answers to questions like: x How has the composition and structure of the middle class changed since the Independence? x When can an individual claim to have arrived in middle class in India? x Why have the aspirations, goals, attitudes and value systems of the Indian urban middle class changed over time? x What are the different Indian government policies that have shaped the direction and status of this class?

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

41

The paper has used secondary sources as well as an exploratory primary survey to understand the continuities and discontinuities of the middle class moorings. A questionnaire was administered to different generations and communities. The data from these 152 respondents were collated and statistically analysed and then linked to several theoretical ideations. The literature survey included, along with the Marxian and Weberian approaches, insights into contemporary thinkers and commentators like Gurucharan Das (2002), who claims that the contemporary middle class is confident, energetic, and ubiquitous; Dipankar Gupta (2011) who highlights the apathy among the middle class towards the underprivileged; Satish Deshpande (2004) who brings out the incoherence of the middle class concept; and Leela Fernandes (2006) who avers that the middle class cannot be thought of as being apolitical. After addressing the concept of “middle class”, the paper thereafter theorizes the evolutionary facets. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the evolution of the Indian urban middle class in the phases mentioned above. The paper then discusses the survey’s findings and ends with concluding remarks.

Theorizing “class” The current scholarly deliberations on the definition of class in sociological theory have centred on the emergence and contributions of the “new middle classes” to the economy and society at large. In this context it is pertinent to draw attention to the different approaches to class posited by the Marxian and Weberian schools of thought: x For Marx, class is an objective structure of social position while for Weber social action is crucial in theorizing class. x In Marx’s unidimensional concept of social stratification and cleavage, class relations are paramount, but in Weber’s multidimensional approach the intersection of class relations with other non-class basis of association are the focal concerns. x In Marx’s theoretical leanings, the rationality of class relations and conflicts are founded on exploitation by the political and ideological domination of the elite; Weber stresses on domination being an end in itself and having its own self-regulating logic. x Marx opines that the social relations of production are manifested as class placements. Weber, on the other hand, views classes as market-determined social locations.

42

Chapter Two

According to Deshpande (2004: 126) what you are (at the economic level) shapes what you experience (at the social level) and what you do (at the political level). From the literature review conducted, it can be said that the notion of what constitutes the middle class is based on perceptions and attitudes of people who conceive certain markers that inscribe/include people in the middle class bracket. This paper refers to the concept of a middle class as a social category which has evolved through internal layering. With time, this social category has witnessed an intratransformation, from a singular middle class at the time of Independence to the present day’s lower middle class, middle middle class and upper middle class.

Evolution of the Indian Urban Middle class In this section, the paper traces the evolution of the middle class, the transformation of socially constructed markers and composition of the middle class. This section is fundamental to the paper’s claim that from a single composite group the middle class has expanded into a complex variegated clustering of multiple identities.

At the Time of Independence (1850 to 1947) After the 1857 Uprising, the British implemented new administrative and governance measures. Educational reforms were introduced, and consequently professionally educated groups began emerging in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Thus, the middle class did not emerge as a manufacturing class but was itself “manufactured” in the presidency towns of Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. Lord Macaulay in his “Minute on Indian Education” (1835) said: ‘We must at present do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect’ (Mahapatra 2009: 121). This was necessary for efficient colonial administration. In fact it can be said that the middle class was “culturally invented through colonial English education, yet structurally limited as it lacked a basis for economic expansion due to colonial economic control” (Chatterjee 1992: 24). Those who were traditionally privileged due to their upper caste status had an easy entry into the emerging native elite of the “Brown Sahib” (Das 2002: 283) from which were excluded both the vast majority of agricultural poor who were bereft of education along with the lower castes and the rich industrialists and the Zamindars (land holders). The icons of the day,

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

43

Gandhi and Nehru, and their ideas of morality and modernity respectively found “an irresistible appeal for an urban-centric class, nurtured on western concepts of rationalism and liberalism and impatient to get on with the task of ‘nation building’” (Varma 1998: 29).

Through the Pre-Globalization Era (1947 to 1991) Planning for Self-Sufficiency (1947 to Mid-1960s) Gurucharan Das (2002: 281) points out that at the time of Independence, the middle class was very small (approximately 5% of the population) and “the nature of entrenchment of the middle and upper classes under British rule and their leadership of the freedom movement ensured that the institutions built up during the colonial period remained largely intact” (Varma 1998: 25).The upper caste’s domination continued with education, income, and a sense of idealism regarding nation and society. In this phase, the five year plans were implemented. New colleges, universities, technical institutes, and scientific laboratories opened up in several parts of the country. Industries, business organizations, and commercial activities began to expand. The public sector started expanding as an economic enterprise (Misra 2010: 153). Thus, the middle classes in general and the new middle class in particular, proliferated. Fernandes (2006: 7) points out that “English language skills were necessary but not sufficient” and “needed to be complemented by a ‘respectable’ socio-economic position and family history.” “[I]n the latter half of the 19th century, three divisions of the new middle class emerged in a very significant way: the commercial middle class, the state employees/bureaucracy and educated intelligentsia” (Mishra 2010: 151). A majority of the middle class belonged to the upper caste who were privileged in terms of inherited wealth, family reputation, and English education. With the increase in industrialization, job opportunities (mainly as supervisors, clerks, and manual labourers) emerged in the public sector units. Surprisingly, women did not figure as contributors to this “Age of Hope” (Varma 1998: 25) as they continued to be confined to the “inner” spiritual domain of the home (Chatterjee 1992).

En route to Self-Sufficiency (Mid-1960s to Mid-1980s) In the sixties, as industrial development was vigorously pursued and as steel and other goods were produced, new job opportunities were created, many began to be employed as factory labourers and as supervisors in the

44

Chapter Two

public sector. What the entrants to the middle class were seeking was a kind of security which government jobs provided. In the seventies, the Green Revolution had its impact – the children of the farmers in Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh, and other pockets of prosperity such as the sugar belt in Maharashtra, entered the middle class. The children of the labourers who went to the Middle East during the oil boom were similarly integrated. Some of the markers that heralded one’s arrival into the middle class fold were: disengagement from physical labour, change in attire and footwear, shift to brick or cement houses, and education in English medium schools and second rate colleges for their children. Along with these, ownership of two-wheelers, use of mixer-grinders and travel in video-coaches during vacations (Das 2002: 286) also became popular. There was a change in the character and structure of the middle class and there emerged and developed a local and regional middle class. Within this large and expanding spectrum, there was the gradual evolution of a layered middle class, i.e., the lower middle class and the upper middle class each pursuing different dreams and aspirations, working hard to improve their own positions, and having little regard for those on the lower rungs. The lower middle class comprised the factory labourers, clerks, and public sector employees. Having gained entry into the middle class, they wanted job security and peace of mind as they planned to improve their situation and ensure a better future for their children. The upper middle class expanded to include members of the bureaucracy, professionals, self-made entrepreneurs and businessmen, and the intelligentsia (poets, writers, academicians, activists, and media personnel). The internal differentiation now became discernible. The middle class, deeply rooted in tradition, was conservative. This trend manifested itself in the approach to life in general. Thus, for instance, engineering or medical courses were considered appropriate for the sons only and not the daughters. Women did move out of their homes seeking employment in academia, banking, and medical fields. The number of studies, as pointed out by Fernandes (2006), reveal the rise of the new middle class in various communities, castes, and religions. The articulation and expression of Dalit identity (Shah 2001) and its sociopolitical consciousness as well as body politic have been well documented. Thus, the emerging middle class got enlarged and entrenched into the politico-economic sphere, ready to take off (Misra 2010: 153–154) throughout the seventies.

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

45

Towards Globalization (Mid-1980s to 1991) With rural prosperity, millions of rural families achieved entry into the national middle class. Rajiv Gandhi and his vision of modernizing India by adopting high level technology accompanied by managerial efficiency had many takers. The Mandal Commission’s recommendations on the Reservation Policy had evoked angst among the upper castes and this resulted in widespread violence and rioting in several parts of the nation. It was the upper layer of the middle class that perpetrated this outburst. However, the lower castes favoured this affirmative action as through its implementation they were able to gain economic and social upward mobility gradually. This movement changed the caste composition of the middle class. The era of liberalization was slowly taking shape and the New Economic Policy of 1991 gave the required impetus to economic reforms. The changes were unfolding at a fast pace and so was the enthusiasm of the ever expanding, internally differentiated middle class. National political leaders were replaced by business tycoons, celebrities and even sports-personalities as the new icons. Ironically, the attitudes generally were still conservative: expressing a desire to become a film star or a model, for instance, was still frowned upon.

The Current Globalization Period (1991 onwards) The upper middle class typically comprises of young, urban professionals, working in multinational companies and drawing high salaries, making them the “Consuming Class”. In the post-globalization era, they are perceived as being aggressive, assertive, and risk taking, the aspirations of many being geared to become rich. Das (2002: 285) opines that this new middle class is free from the inhibitions that shackled the older bourgeoisie. It does not seek an endorsement from the West; for them “what works is good”. It is result-oriented and pragmatic, pushing the politicians to liberalize and globalize, but it itself tends to be apolitical. Its primary preoccupation is with improving its standards of living and social mobility and enthusiastically embracing consumerist values and lifestyles. The residential spaces of these young middle class men and women comprise at least 3-bedroom apartments in upscale areas. Some of them even espouse ethnicity and religious revival and a few even endorse fundamentalism. In the wake of liberalization, jobs in the services sector and IT industry are coveted. Intellectual labour has become vital for business and commerce and so their young are taking to the world of knowledge vigorously.

46

Chapter Two

This sub-class is enthralled by the Forbes List’s members, top-notch celebrities from the film and media world as well as lifestyle gurus. They maintain their exclusivity by pursuing a particular high-end lifestyle, enrol their children in elitist private schools and arrange private home tuition for their children. It has become a sort of social compulsion to send their children abroad for postgraduate studies and at times even for undergraduate studies. Important markers of the upper middle class lifestyle include opting for branded items in their routine consumption, holidaying abroad and relying on domestic help in the form of cooks, fulltime maids, and chauffeurs. Further add-ons comprise exclusive club memberships, socializing in luxurious hotels/resorts and flaunting their gold card membership. The middle middle class comprises bank employees, teaching community, and service sector employees. They use loan facilities for housing (which ranges from 1-bedroom upwards and furnished according to upper middle class tastes) as well as for professional education on which a high premium is placed. They generally tend to embrace the icons of the upper middle class but also choose to have a relative (even a grandparent) as a role model. They tend to use the upper middle class consumption patterns as a reference point. Thus, for instance, they also rely on the part-time domestic help and enrol their children in tuition classes and sometimes even dance classes or art classes. They ensure that their children are busy during vacations so that they develop new skills to fit in a competitive society. They organize celebrations in Grade I restaurants or at home through catering services. Their vacations are usually within the country and often low-budget. They have become vocal and participative as is clearly seen in their activism in the Jessica Lal murder case and Anna Hazare’s campaign against corruption. This sub-class continuously applies pressure on politicians to take a stand or evolve reforms for their benefits and looks on the state as a welfare agency. The lower middle class comprises support staff personnel across the formal and informal sector. They aspire to be like the upper classes by aping their lifestyles and consumption patterns through the use of imitation goods which are available through the ever-expanding informal economy. This sub-category strives to give a decent education to their children to ensure a better future. They mostly live in 1-room apartments in redeveloped buildings which are generally located in unhygienic environments and face problems in accessing public amenities. Their icons are usually those who have risen to positions of respectability from among them. In their attempt to imitate the lifestyles of the higher classes, they get indebted as they indulge in upgrading their limited dwellings and

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

47

celebrating occasions like birthdays or anniversaries by having home parties where eatables like noodles, pasta, cake, wafers, and beverages are an ostentatious part of the menu. They are politically affiliated to parties along caste lines.

Survey Findings In order to validate the markers discussed above a primary exploratory study was conducted. A questionnaire was administered to a random sample of 152 respondents. These interviewees cut across generations, religions, and communities. The target zone for the interviews was deliberately chosen to be areas that are obviously middle class in appearance. The data collected was collated through the Excel program and statistically analysed for identifying the existence of markers and their transformative cross-sectional and cross-temporal trends. For the latter trends, the terms “then” and “now” were used to reflect the changing timeframe in their life as it unfolded. Aspirations: This qualitative variable was included in the survey to discover the respondents’ latent desires and if they had been able to realize them. The data was collated to capture the respondents’ movements in upper-end career aspirations. It was found that 33% of the sample had aspired to upper-end careers but over the course of their lives 49% of the 51 respondents had veered away from their original career aspirations either to lead a stress-free life or to have lower-level careers. This significant proportion of drop-out can be sociologically looked at as escape from the pressures of modern life (competition, costs of living, and job insecurities) or as a choice of a better quality of life over monetary gains. Residence Status: In the questionnaire, this variable was included to decipher the residential type movements across time. The data shows that there has been a general upward movement in housing-type patterns. According to the survey, a 1 BHK residential setup is the most sought after type. This trend can be explained on the basis of affordability and sociologically as an expression of having “arrived” in the middle class. Collateral issues that arise from this residential-type data are concerned with debt-entrapment and the ability to finance the “ratchet effect” of being socially “up there”.

48

Chapter Two

Figure 2.1: Residential Shifts (Figures are percentages)

Icons: The attribute of Icons was chosen as a variable in the questionnaire in order to capture the role model figure for the respondents then and now. It was found that there was no major shift in terms of the reference point (se Figure 2.2). With choosing relatives as role models, it shows that the sociological agency of family is an important factor in influencing one’s direction in life, irrespective of class moorings. Figure 2.2: Changing Icons (Figures are percentages)

Nature of Job Profiles: This attribute was chosen to capture the mindset of the middle class in terms of their desire to work in the public or private sectors or their preference to be self-employed. The finding (Figure

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

49

2.3) reflected that people have moved from the security of public sector employment (50% of respondents) and are willing to take the risk of an insecure private sector job. Then, 11% of the respondents had opted for self-employment, and now this figure stands at 24%. Figure 2.3: Changing Job Profile (Figures are percentages) Note: Inner Circle represents “Then” figures

From a sociological perspective, this shift towards self-employment indicates that the current middle class is far from being conservative (visà-vis job security) and is more risk-taking. One wonders whether the shift towards self-employment is a validation of what one respondent said: “I would rather be an employer than an employee.” Changing Consumption Pattern: Since this paper is concerned with continuities and discontinues in the middle class moorings, the writer felt it necessary to consider the consumption patterns as fundamental markers of behavioural changes. From the various consumption items surveyed, access to domestic support, mode of routine travel, and handling of medical issues have been highlighted due to their repetition in daily life. Figure 2.4 shows that maids have always been an integral part of middle class households, with a part-time maid being the preferred choice. Now, access to domestic support has grown in a variety of ways. This is certainly an indication of a demonstration of one’s financial capacity.

50

Chapter Two

Figure 2.4: Access to Domestic Support (Figures are percentages)

Figure 2.5: Modes of Routine Transport (Figures are percentages)

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

51

Figure 2.6: Access to Medical Facilities (Figures are percentages)

In the sphere medical expenditures, the data reveals that 22% and 12% of the respondents have reduced their use of the facilities of the local general practitioner and public hospitals respectively (Figure 2.6). Is this shift towards the more expensive but less time consuming specialty medical services an indication of the enhanced purchasing power or company perks or an “I-have-arrived” statement?

Conclusions 1. Having traced and discussed the continuities and discontinuities of the middle class markers, the paper now makes general comments on these transformations. At the time of Independence, the middle class was actually manufactured by the British for achieving administrative efficiency. Today, there are no such state-sponsored projects with respect to the middle class and so this class evolves on its own terms. This middle class, according to Dipankar Gupta (2011: 12, 21), is neither modernized nor westernized. It has not been able to shed the caste tag, nor has it been able to establish universal norms and ensure accountability in public life. 2. The composition and numbers of the middle class have radically changed as caste has seamlessly fused with class in urban spaces. The composite middle class has now trifurcated into lower middle class (the “walkers” (Misra 2010: 158)), middle middle class (the “climbers”

52

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

Chapter Two

(ibid)) and upper middle class (the “achievers” (ibid)). Each of these sub-classes has its own unique lifestyles, job profiles and ambitions; however, these attributes are not water-tight markers and their innate fluidity allows social mobility. There is cyclical impetus given to behaviour patterns across these sub-sectors. This dynamism can be articulated as follows: movement from one sub-sector to other causes a discontinuity with the lifestyles of the previous sector as one weaves his/her way into the new sector and thereby continues the mindset of the new sector. This vertical climb momentum gives rise to three A’s: Aspirational goals, Assertive tendency and Apathetical dispositions. On the aspirational front, the middle class has discontinued its traditional and conservative approach to life ahead. Some of the women who were surveyed for this paper have succeeded in realizing their visions of being a part of society by breaking free from their imposed cocoons. Men are ready to share space with women, allowing them to work outside the home, while they themselves have ventured into insecure but lucrative private sector jobs. As far as the assertive attribute is concerned the middle class is now more vocal in demanding not only Bijli, Sadaak, Paani (power, roads, water supply) but also employment, education, and entitlements. The lower castes have found a niche in the middle class by benefiting from what has been promised to them and now are the “creamy layer”. The survey found that the middle class (in general) aggressively pursue their dreams even if it means becoming indebted for a period of time. With regard to the apathetic disposition, the middle class does come across as being far from being altruistic. The survey findings validate this perception as not many of the respondents had any long term dedicated community service commitments (especially for the underprivileged). Whenever they have participated in public for a cause, they have been motivated by self-interest and self-preservation. George Bernard Shaw’s middle class morality of being there for others is obviously too utopian in any modern society. Being selfish, in the Ayn Rand sense, is only natural as the intense competition that the middle class encounters forces it to be inward-looking in order to be outwardly relevant. The middle class would not be able to overcome conflicts and competitions through co-operation and consent, but rather through clashes and collisions to surmount discontinuities so as to maintain continuities.

Middle Class Historical Moorings: Continuities and Discontinuities

53

References Chatterjee, P. 1992. “A Religion of Urban Domesticity: Shree Ramakrishna and the Calcutta Middle Class”, in P. Chatterjee and G. Pandey (eds), Subaltern Studies VII, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Das, Gururcharan. 2002. India Unbound: From Independence to Global Information Age, New Delhi: Penguin Books. Deshpande, S. 2004. Contemporary India: A Sociological View, New Delhi: Penguin Books India. Fernandes, Leela. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gupta, Dipankar. 2011. Mistaken Modernity: India between Worlds, Noida: HarperCollins India. Mahapatra, S. 2009. “The Explosion of the Middle Class”, in N. Chandoke and P. Priyadarshi, Contemporary India: Economy, Society, Politics, New Delhi: Pearson. Misra, R. 2010. “Control from the Middle: A perspective on Indian New Middle Class”, in T.K. Oommen, Classes, Citizenship and Inequality: Emerging Perspectives, New Delhi: Pearson. Shah, G. 2001. “Dalit Movements and the Search for Identity”, in G. Shah (ed.), Dalit Identity and Politics, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Varma, P. 1998. The Great Indian Middle Class, New Delhi: Viking/Penguin Books India.

CHAPTER THREE INDIA’S MIDDLE CLASS: THEN AND NOW MANDAKINI JHA

I Making use of “substantive” (Dhanagare 2007: 3499) history, this paper, by focusing on education, income and occupation, traces the trajectory and the various processes involved in the making of the middle class in India from the time it was regarded as “an important social formation of some significance” (Joshi 2010: xxiv). In recent decades, as Dhanagare points out, Indian sociologists have engaged in the systematic use of history with a view to understanding and explaining social reality whereby a re-enactment of past events and experiences helps explain the present in sociological studies in India. Distinguishing “substantive” use of history from “metaphoric”, he highlights the former use of history for sociological purposes, whether for macro or micro level analysis or by using primary archival or secondary sources, in order to arrive at broader levels of explanation, generalization, and theoretical abstraction wherever feasible in pursuit of holistic sociological analysis (2007: 3507).

II The term “middle class”, first deployed in the context of European history, not only comprised the elements of the industrial bourgeoisie but included those who supported the changes that came with modernity and capitalism such as writers, novelists and intellectuals (Rajagopal 2011: 39ff). Colonial rulers did not deploy the term as they were not keen to endorse the presence of a group with prospects of having a progressive role. Viceroy Dufferin chose to call them a “certain number of leading natives”, who were in a “microscopic minority” not representative of the

India’s Middle Class: Then and Now

55

people of India. There is no knowledge of who used the term first. Aurobindo Ghosh used it in 1893 and since then it has gained wide currency. He agreed with Dufferin that the “new middle class”, a group of journalists, barristers, doctors, officials, graduates, and traders, did not represent the people of India. In the context of India, it is employed as a catch-all category for a number of groups with a variety of dimensions of social experience and standing, not only in Marxian economic sense but also including the dimensions of religion, caste, and gender among others (Rajagopal 2011: 39; Beteille 2007: 945ff). The middle class is usually mentioned in juxtaposition with the “public sphere” in recent times, where, leaving behind their primordial identities, public opinion is articulated and reasoned debate is conducted by individuals who form temporary collectivities (Rajagopal 2011: 39). Was there a “middle class” in this sense for pre-modern India during the centuries that immediately preceded the colonial rule? If so, does it point towards the possibilities of indigenous modernity in India as recent historiographical trends have been exploring? (Dufferin [1888] 2010). Is there “a pre-history of the middle class?” (Bayly 2010: xxiv ). Public opinion was not the preserve of modern and western polities, argues Christopher Bayly. He uses the word “ecumene” to describe the form of cultural and political debate which was typical of north India before the emergence of the newspaper and public association, yet persisted in conjunction with the press and new form of publicity into the age of nationalism. The ecumene of Hindustani-writing literati, Indo-Islamic notables and officers of the state (which included many Hindus) fought its battles with a well-tested arsenal of handwritten media. The guardians of the ecumene represented the views of the bazaar people and artisans when urban communities came under pressure. Their connections spread across religious, sectarian, and caste boundaries though they never dissolved them. A common background in the Indo-Persian, and to a lesser extent, Hindu classics enlightened them. The theme of high-minded friendship animated the poets, scholars and officials who conversed along these networks and set the tone for them. Though suffused with pride of country, the ecumene remained cosmopolitan, receiving information and ideas from central and west Asia as well as from within a dimly defined ‘Hindustan” (Bayly 2010: 70-71).

This ecumene exercised a degree of critical surveillance over the activities of the state with the literati or the officials using poetry, satire, letter writing, placarding, festivals, and religious congregations, thus functioning as a critical reasoning public; it can be compared to the

56

Chapter Three

modern European public in that sense (Joshi 2010: xxxiii; Bayly 2010: 70– 71). This may be contestable, as Sanjay Joshi points out, but he does admit that Christopher Bayly “allows us to understand the significant continuities that mark the pre-colonial and colonial eras and better understand the nature of the resources – material as well as cultural – that were deployed in middle-class formation during the colonial era” (Joshi 2010: xxxiii). In the western context, the public sphere is defined as the domain of communication given form by the printed media and the market and though the market was in the process of emergence in the Indian context, print media were not (Rajagopal 2011: 40). B.B. Misra informs that institutions favourable to capitalist growth were not deficient in India before the British rule and that Indian artisan industry and occupational specialization were very highly developed, in addition to the separate class of merchants known for the wide scope of their international trade, the quality of their goods, and the enormity of their wealth. Organized in guilds which regulated prices, they protected trading rights against the interference of royal officials and landed magnates (Misra 1961; Prasad 1948). But, “while institutions conducive to capitalist development were not entirely lacking in India, they were held back due to the political system (policies of kings, royal officials) and the social system (caste)” (Rajagopal 2011: 40). Moreover, their situation was equally unfavourable ideologically as the literary classes who followed intellectual professions were unaware of the crafts; the artisans who had the monopoly of craftsmanship received no education and the education of the business class was limited to commercial accounts, their knowledge descending from father to son. “Occupational specialization arose from hereditary callings, not from higher education or research, which remained literary in emphasis and divorced from the pursuits of applied skills and sciences” (Misra 1961: 9). Although the modern Indian cities may be an outcome of a foreign mode of production, there were cities in India long before the machine age and before the feudal period (Kosambi [1964] 2008). Archaeological evidence points out two cities in the basin of the Indus, Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, with carefully planned civic organization of high complexity and excellence. The duration of this Indus urban culture was roughly 3000–2000 B.C. The city, says Kosambi, normally becomes the seat of power and more than one city points to the presence of a state where class division and division of labour existed – some people had to produce a food surplus which was then taken away by others who did not, but who planned, directed, and controlled operations. Enormous granaries, too large to be in private possession, were accompanied by small tenement

India’s Middle Class: Then and Now

57

houses in regular blocks which must have housed the special class of workers or slaves who pounded and stored grain. Evidence shows that there was considerable trade, partly across the ocean, and Indians exported peacocks, ivory and ivory articles, apes, pearls, and cotton textiles besides copper. The island of Bahrein was the great trade depot for exchange between the Indus region and Iraq. After the final destruction of the cities, a great deal of what survived from the Indus culture was connected with craftsmanship and trade (Kosambi 1964: 54ff), found also in ancient India.1

III The idea of an Indian middle class emerged in the colonial era (Joshi 2010: xxiii). In the seventeenth century, a significant change was taking place commercially when a class of brokers was associating rapidly with the trading companies of the West which, in spite of limitations, established itself as a stable middle class bourgeois interest, sharing the benefits of increasing trade and opportunities for educational employment. With the knowledge of broken English which enabled them to be interpreters to foreigners they were employed by them to manage their business, to advance money to the manufacturers, and collect the finished goods for warehousing and transportation – they were the first to rise in status and money power (Misra 1961: 64). Certain new conditions developed under the rule of the East India Company which stimulated the growth of the Indian middle class in modern times. These were: the mild and the constitutional character of government and the rule of law, the security of private property and the defined rights of the agricultural classes, a national system of education and a period of continued peace, the economy of laissez-faire, and a liberal policy of employment and social reform (Misra 1961: 69). A century of commercial development under the Company helped a variety of middlemen and its own employees to grow into the stature of middle-class merchants. Their number not only grew but there was also a qualitative change in the character and relationship of the new class of merchants. Large scale commerce and import industry and the emergence of joint stock companies led to an increased specialized commercial organization leading to a multiplicity of employment which required special education and training. Thus the new commercial class was taking the lead in English education, especially in Bengal among the Brahmans, Kayasthas and Vaishyas, i.e. the Kulins, who acted as leaders of modern commerce and education (Misra 1961: 106).

58

Chapter Three

The British imported the idea and institutions of the middle class social order in India to create a class of imitators through the diffusion, throughout India, of English language and culture to create intentionally a “class, Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect” (Sharp 1920: 116; Misra 1961: 10–11) resulting in the rapid growth of literary classes caring more for position and influence in the civil service and councils in the context of respect attached to higher education and professional skill which imparted money power and social status not enjoyed before. Educational and technological advancement led the way towards the goal of the middle class society with India’s industrially developed cities producing a social order comparable to its European counterpart, exhibiting in great measure an element of uniformity in their behaviour pattern and style of life as well as their mode of thinking and social values. The bulk of the Indian middle classes comprised the educated professions such as government servants and lawyers, college teachers, and doctors, and those who formed the rising classes were mercantile as well as the industrial elements who were dominant in the context of the Western middle classes (Misra 1961: 11ff). Those who came to term themselves middle class in colonial India were from the upper rungs of Indian society but they did not comprise a social group that was seen to occupy a median position in terms of standard sociological indicators of income, consumption, status, or education. In fact, as Sanjay Joshi puts it, the elitism of the people who claimed this category was even more pronounced during the colonial era as most of them were male upper caste Hindus, ashrafi (noble) Muslims, or other such high status groups, and many came from families and social groups who had traditionally served in the courts of indigenous rulers and large landlords and, having enough economic and educational resources, they were able to shape and participate in public debates in the colonial era. But similarities in education, occupation and profession did not transform these educated people to the middle class. What was needed in addition was “cultural entrepreneurship”, initiation into new “cultural politics”, which would distinguish, say, upper caste Hindus or ashrafis from other social groups, allowing them to be significant actors in the affairs of colonial India through self conscious interpositions in pursuit of creating a new and distinctive social category to be active in controlling the public sphere (Joshi 2010: xviii–xix). Not a monolithic entity, the middle class in colonial India was characterized by significant regional differences as well as religious diversity. There were significant differences and debates within the middle class and different moments in their making and the differences and the

India’s Middle Class: Then and Now

59

commonalities that characterize the class in its making in different times, but there were intersections which make it possible to talk about the middle class in colonial India (Joshi 2010: xx–xxi). Do we see continuity between the “ecumene” of pre-colonial India and the “middle class” which emerged in the colonial regime (Rajagopal 2011: 40)? When the middle class is differentiated into various religious communities, one finds some continuity: the formation of the middle class among Muslims, for example, was not a product of western education but emerged out of a “shifting of alliances within a traditional framework” (Rajagopal 2011: 40; Pernau 2010). “Authenticity” and “inauthenticity” debates (Joshi 2010: xxv) characterized the emerging “westernized middle class”. Torri recounts the perspective of the Cambridge school, as found in the writings of Judith Brown and David Washbrook, that the middle class in India consisted of “middle men” who mediated between different factions and leaders (Torri 1990: 2ff; Rajgopal 2011: 41), which eventually joined hands with other classes in the nationalist fervour in pursuit of India’s independence as “the subject and agent of nationalism” (Visweswaran 2008: 23). B.N. Ganguli wrote in 1955 that the middle class in India grew as a parasitic class devoid of the vital elements like the independent farmer and the selfrespecting artisan. The most numerous elements of this class were people with inadequate intermediary interests in land as rent receivers, who had to supplement their income by urban occupations either in the professions or as salaried employees. Owing to the poverty of the country and lack of industrial development, the chances of employment were not expanding as fast as the number of men seeking employment. Owing to the growing depression in agriculture the income of this class as rentiers was also dwindling fast. With the recent disappearance of landlordism, this element of the middle class has now become exclusively dependent upon urban occupations. Inflation during the two wars seriously undermined its economic power, The Great Depression between the two wars sapped its economic vitality. This element of the middle class actually found the ground slipping from under its feet. To crown all the Partition destroyed whatever economic strength and resiliency it possessed in spite of the vicissitudes of the last few decades (Ganguli 1955).

This section of the middle class, joining hands with other classes in the community, led the national movement. Having felt the most the cramping influence of British rule, they developed hard core nationalist resistance. They had become partially uprooted from the soil and yet regarded shopkeeping, trading and manual work as degrading occupations and assigned

60

Chapter Three

a higher value to literature and art and revivalism in general which inspired the nationalist movement (Ganguli 1955).

IV Post-independence India sees the middle class having a “managerial” relationship with the state, as service and professional classes and later as an “assertive and visible” competitor for claims on the state; these developments can be said to be responsible also for the rise of the new middle class identity in liberalizing India (Fernandes 2006; Visweswaran 2008: 23ff) . To quote Leela Fernandez: “It is this middle class frustration stemming from the overextended politics of state-management that has led to an increasingly assertive and visible middle class role – one that has periodically been manifested through the rise of a new middle class identity in liberalising India” (Fernandes 2006: 27). She defines this new middle class as “English-educated urban middle class individuals, the core of the new Indian middle class” (ibid: 115). “At the structural level, the new middle class is not comprised of new entrants to middle class status. Rather it is defined by a change in the status of jobs, which now signify the upper tiers of middle class employment” (ibid: 89). According to Visweswaran, her central argument is that the “newness” of the new middle class is due not so much to a changed demographic profile, but to the way it embodies a changing or “new” set of norms for Indian nation. Modesty and understatement once marked a middle class ethic; consumption now forms the basis of a new form of citizenship (Visweswaran 2008: 24). Further, Fernandes (2008) describes how liberalization brings about a shift in national political culture with the middle class representing an idealized liberal standard and how middle class aspirations shift away from public sector government jobs and toward employment in private sector multinational corporations with the transition from state managed economy to a liberalized one; privatization of the state is taking place due to the state and central governments subcontracting. She also argues that middle class politics may intersect with the rise of Hindu nationalism but the politics of the new middle class cannot be reduced to the politics of Hindutva. The cultural capital of higher education and social capital acquired through professional careers continue to dominate the new middle class but this is also distinguished from the “old” Indian economy by its global integration (Upadhya 2004: 5141ff). As Sahana Udupa tells us: “Distinct from the ‘old’ middle class of the developmentalist era, the heterogeneous

India’s Middle Class: Then and Now

61

middle class of globalizing India is marked by self-definitions of belonging to the world class” (Udupa 2013: 29).

V There is no denying that the Indian middle class is “an important social formation of some significance” in controlling the public sphere and that it continues to articulate public opinion through different kinds of mobilization of action, the anti-corruption movement being one such case. The ecumene, having remained cosmopolitan, maintains a degree of critical surveillance over the activities of the state, functioning as a critical reasoning public with panopticon and synopticon elements.

Note 1 I am grateful to Professor A.M. Shah for his useful remarks suggesting I look at urban society in and since the Indus culture.

References Bayly, C.A. 2010. “A Pre-History of the Middle Class?”, in S. Joshi (ed.), The Middle Class in Colonial India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Beteille, Andre. 2007. “Classes and Communities”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLII, No. 11 (17 March), pp. 945–952. Dhanagare, D.N. 2007. “Practising Sociology Through History: The Indian Experience – I”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLII, No. 33 (18 August), pp. 3414–3421. —. 2007. “Practicing Sociology through History: The Indian Experience – II”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLII, No. 34, August 25, pp.3499-3508. Dufferin and Ava, Marquis of. (1888) 2010. “A Microscopic Minority”, in S. Joshi (ed.), The Middle Class in Colonial India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Fernandes, Leela. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Ganguli, B.N. 1955. “The Indian Middle Classes – Its Future”, in The Economic Weekly, Vol.7, No.42 (15 October), pp. 1223–1228. Joshi, Sanjay. 2010. “Introduction”, in S. Joshi (ed.), The Middle Class in Colonial India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, p. xxiv.

62

Chapter Three

Kosambi, D.D. (1964) 2008. The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House. Misra, B.B. 1961. The Indian Middle Classes, London: Oxford University Press. Pernau, Margaret. 2010. “Middle Class and Secularization”, in S. Joshi (ed.), The Middle Class in Colonial India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Prasad, Mukerji, and Dhurjati. 1948. “Economic Process and the Middle Class”, in Modern Indian Culture: A Sociological Study, Bombay: Hind Kitab. Rajagopal, V. 2011. “The ‘Leading Natives’”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVI, No. 6 (5 February), pp. 39–41. Sharp, H. 1920. Selections from the Educational Records, pt I, 1781–1839, Calcutta, 1920. Torri, Michelguglielmo. 1990. “Westernised Middle Class, Intellectuals and Society in Late Colonial India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXV, No. 4 (27 January), pp. PE-2–11. Udupa, Sahana. 2013. “World Class Aspirations: The New Middle Class of India”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVIII, No. 15, April 13, pp. 29-31. Upadhya, Carol. 2004. “A New Transnational Capitalist Class?: Capital Flows, Business Networks, and Entrepreneurs in Software Industry”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXIX, No. 48 (27 November), pp. 5141–5151. Visweswaran, Kamala. 2008. “The New Middle Class”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIII, No. 21 (24 May).

CHAPTER FOUR THE “NEW” MIDDLE CLASS IN INDIA: CONCEPTUAL DILEMMAS AND EMPIRICAL REALITIES JUHI SINGH

The “middle classes of India” comes up as an ambiguous concept today. Often one is confronted with the ambiguity in defining who the “new” middle classes are and how they are distinct from the traditional middle classes in India. Several studies have suggested definitions and operational tool kits that seem to make the conceptual understanding and use of the term “middle class” even more ambiguous. The nature of the middle class in India has been seen as evolving and changing with the passage of time. The middle classes in India after the economic reforms of the 1990s were exposed to a market where there were millions of opportunities to access world class amenities. In other words, a few recently “entering” or “emerging” middle classes have also become participants in the global market and have come to acquire characteristics of “global” notions of what and who the middle classes are. The participation of the middle classes in the global market in a way signifies an impetus for the growing consumerist tendency among them. It is this new feature of middle class consumerism (Fernandes 2006; Brosius 2010) that has been projected as a key element in defining the “newness” in the “new” middle class. Apart from the prominent aspect of consumerism, another characteristic which has been highlighted in the current works to define the “new” in the new middle class terminology is the change in the social composition of the middle class population. The term “new middle class” is used to designate the recent entrants who, or whose parents, have experienced the upward social mobility and are the first generation middle classes (Kamat 1981; Saavala 2010). But in defining middle-class-ness in terms of these markers of consumerism and social mobility one may very often witness a gap between these theoretical

64

Chapter Four

explanations and empirical reality. It has been presented by earlier works that to understand the concept of the middle class in India one has to engage with empirical realities also (Donner 2012: 12). These works also state that the theoretical works cannot be fully applied to the empirical reality and that there is always a gap between the two (Deshpande 2003:133). Taking a clue from Donner and Deshpande, who highlight the need of empirical investigation to understand the nature of the middle class, this paper aims to explore the conceptual dilemmas and examine the empirical realities as well as the validity of the new terminological addition “new middle class” into social science discourse. The dilemma is evident in the argument that the newly emerging/emerged middle classes have the potential to be consumerist while they still cope with the baggage of deprivation of the past, especially in the case of groups such as Scheduled Castes and Tribes in India. This is because we can still see various groups in India who though somehow having access to some form of world class amenities, still lack the strength to fight for basic subsistence level existence. It is visible through empirical case studies that though some may obtain a job and enter the realm of consumerism, there is, nonetheless, still a refusal from their side to call themselves “middle class”. It is this dilemma of using the concept of new middle classes that this work tries to examine and even question. The case studies presented in this paper can be seen as posing a challenge to the concepts which have been used to describe the newly emerged terminology of “new middle class” in India. This poses a question on the usage of the term “new middle class” for those who are first-generation job seekers. It also questions the consumerist features of the “new middle class” which is primarily used to denote the new middle class phenomenon. This chapter aims to explore these conceptual dilemmas and examine the validity of this newly emerged terminology “new middle class” meant to define the middle class in India today with the help of empirical investigation.

“Old” or “New” Middle Classes in India: Conceptual Dilemmas The middle classes can be seen to have originated in colonial times. The colonial government, with a view to forming a workforce out of the Indian population for their administrative works, introduced English education. The English education then reconstructed the personalities of those who received English education. They now adopted a lifestyle which was close to that of English people. Thus they came to be popularly known

The “New” Middle Class in India

65

as brown sahibs. Sanjay Joshi (2001) points out that the emergence of the middle class within the Indian population can be seen as a consequence of the new kind of education system. This new middle class was very much distinct in its lifestyle and choices that governed their lives. The type of education and the type of occupation were mostly decided in the framework of the new thought process which described the middle classes in colonial times. The major work which came in Indian academia defining the nature of middle class before and after independence was a two-volume work by B.B. Misra (1961) tracing the growth of the Indian middle classes, i.e., the class of people which arose as a result of changes in the British social policy and with the introduction of the new economic system and industry and the subsequent growth of new professions from about the middle of the eighteenth century to modern times. He also goes back to pre-colonial times to trace the features of the middle class at that time. With his writing, we get a very broad view of the Indian middle class from precolonial times to colonial and post-independence times. This is one of the major works which covers the characteristics of the middle class in India. In the late 1970s however a kind of change was visible in India at the economic front. The significant change ushered in by the Indira Gandhi government was the salary hike through the 1973 Pay Commission. The change can be attributed also to the effects of the green revolution, remittances from Indian migrant labourers in the Gulf, and more broadly, the complex of reforms collectively known as liberalization (Mazarella 1999: 2). With these changes there was a visible transition in the economic and social character of the middle classes. The most general story concerning the transformation of the middle class in India describes a shift, in the 1970s and 1980s, from an older, relatively coherent understanding of what ‘middle class’ connoted – classically, a Nehruvian civil service-oriented salariat, short on money but long on institutional perks to entrepreneurial pretenders to the title. (Mazarella 1999: 1)

This change was visible in some works which used the term “‘new middle” class to define the newness of the middle class characteristics triggered by the changes brought in 1970s and 1980s. In one of the works, the newness was defined by highlighting the dependent existence of the middle class which is incorporated in big organizations, corporations and administrative machinery requiring various kinds of professional, technical, scientific, and administrative skills (Singh 1985: 76). Thus it is

66

Chapter Four

the expansion of the tertiary sector in this era to which the growth of the middle class can be attributed. This change was visible in the later works which came up with the aim of defining middle class. Henrike Donner and Geert De Neve (2011) in their study on the middle class and its nature argue that the academic works on middle classes in India show a gradual change in the nature of the middle class in India. They observe that the works which covered the pre-independence and post-independence period refer to the families of government employees, doctors, and employees in private firms who consciously understood themselves as modern nationalist elite (Donner 2012). With these arguments about the nature of the middle class in the period before and after independence there was a possibility of categorizing the middle class under one cultural framework of bourgeois nationalism. However, taking the discussion further to explain the nature of the middle class today, the “old” middle class which has been described above as a homogenous entity has today, with its particular educational and occupational trajectories, become heterogeneous, and its cultural, political, and economic hegemony can no longer be taken for granted. Factors such as affirmative action and the economic achievement of upwardly mobile communities as well as the rhetoric of “new” consumerist Indian middle class have broadened the discourse on middle-class-ness and created novel practices and social relations (Donner 2012). Through these lines, we can see that the nature of the middle classes before the 1990s has gradually transformed. Thus, this also indicates a shift in the middle class scholarship in India where with the changes a demarcation appeared between the “old” middle classes and the “new” middle classes. Post-1990s India has witnessed a large scale transformation in the economy and society and these transformations are primarily guided by economic liberalization and opening up of the economy to multinational corporations from across the borders thereby allowing a large inflow of global capital, technology, and manpower hiring practices into Indian society. The global inflow of markets in turn is said to be instrumental in the rise of occupational opportunities for educated individuals and has facilitated a widening of the professional or the middle classes in India at least in the post-2000s when the effects of the neoliberal economic regime are said to have started showing results. This is evident in the results shown in several committee reports which have studied and noted the expansion of the middle class in India.

The “New” Middle Class in India

67

The Expanding Middle Class There has been a significant rise in the middle class and aspiring middle class population which is 35% of all households (NCAER 2005). With rapid economic growth over the last decade, the income of the average household in urban India has grown by about a third between 1993/1994 and 2009/2010. These reports also highlight that in this period economic growth not only lifted millions of households out of poverty, but also gave rise to an emerging middle class with new consumption patterns and, potentially, a strong interest in sound and stable political and economic institutions. The question is who constitutes this middle class in India and India’s National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) has been at the forefront of shaping this debate. NCAER’s current definition identifies the middle class as comprising two sub-groups: “seekers” with annual household income between Rs 200,000 and Rs 500,000, and “strivers” with annual household income between Rs 500,000 and Rs 1 million at 2001/2002 prices. Assuming an average household size of 5 people and converting into constant 2005 purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars, these numbers would be about $8 to $20 per capita per day for seekers, and $20 to $40 per capita per day for strivers. Most recently, NCAER applied this definition to a proprietary household survey conducted in 2004/2005, the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure (NSHIE). In an NCAER-CMCR publication, Shukla (2010) rescaled this survey using national accounts data and found that the Indian “middle class” doubled in size over the last decade, growing from 5.7% of all Indian households in 2001/02 to 12.8% of all households in 2009/2010. This corresponds to about 28.4 million households with a total of 153 million people (Meyer & Birdsall 2012: 2). These reports also show a significant rise in the middle class population in India. The ground for this expansion is explained in terms of purchasing capacity. Thus the aspect of consumption comes as a major part in defining the newness of the “new middle class”. This expansion was also noticed by the scholarship in India and some major works emerged to define the newness in the middle class characteristics.

New Middle Class: A View of the Post-1990s Literature The changes since the 1990s have been captured in various ways in some works defining new attributes of the middle class in India. In this respect Appadurai (1997) mentions that post-patriotic identities are

68

Chapter Four

emerging today. He sees a great hope in the ideologies, organizations, and identities initiated by globalization (1997: 75). Here also when Appadurai talks about the new identities coming up there is a hint of change in the middle class composition who have adopted a new ideology and identity after globalization. Another major work on the middle class which arrived in academia was the very much celebrated book by Pawan Verma (1998). He presents a very elaborate picture of the changes at empirical level which were visible after the reforms brought by liberalization and privatization. He mainly argues that there is a decline in the social responsibility of the Indian middle class and its gradual abdication of a broader ethical and moral responsibility to the poor and to the nation as a whole. Thus he also points out some change which is definitely a differentiating factor between the nature of the middle class before the liberalization reforms and after that. Deshpande (2003) also uses the term “new middle class” in the context of change in the middle class lifestyle influenced by globalization. He uses the relational phenomena of Althusser and says that the change in the middle class character is like a connection between “message” and its “addressee”. In other words, when a person feels he is being addressed by an ideology then it becomes effective (Deshpande 2003: 149). He further says that this change has been particularly witnessed in the middle class, particularly in the upper segment (professional/managerial) in the most influential way. A number of works have been published on this subject in recent years. The work in this line which became most prominent in using the term “new middle class” was Fernandes (2006). The newness about the middle class which she highlights also presents the shift in the nature of the middle class. Policies of economic liberalization initiated since the 1990s have been accompanied by an array of visual images and public discourses that have centered on a shifting role of the middle class and their attitudes, lifestyles, and consumption practices (Fernandes 2006: xv).

This new lifestyle has been so predominant today that it has now come to be the defining feature of the middle classes. The extent of these changes is such that many scholars have given it a whole new nomenclature of “new middle class”. Thus in the contemporary period, the “new” middle class, as a social group, is depicted as negotiating India’s new relationship with the global economy in both cultural and economic terms (Fernandes 2006: xv).

The “New” Middle Class in India

69

Fernandes’ idea of the “new” in the new middle class can be seen in the light of the following statement: The rise of the new Indian middle class represents the political construction of a social group that operates as a proponent of economic liberalization. This middle class is not “new” in terms of its structural or social basis (Fernandes 2006: xvii).

In other words, according to her, its “newness” does not refer to upwardly mobile segments of the population entering the middle class. Therefore, newness in the new middle class can be attributed to the change in lifestyle and consumption patterns but not in social composition. Minna Saavala (2010) also uses this terminology to talk about the newness of the new middle class. She mentions that the new in the new middle class refers both to the novel and the recent. The author further says that they are unique because they are different from the old middle class like the wealthy merchants and professionals who traditionally have a long family history of engagement with organizations, mainly the government and other public employers. The social status of the new middle class is of recent origin in the sense that they or their parents have experienced upward social mobility (Saavala 2010: 11). She also shows in her study that these middle classes have led to the development of new consumer societies. However, in the later chapters, through her ethnographic research done in Hyderabad, she talks about the daily struggle which a middle class undergoes in preserving the moral values which a middle class person upholds. Brosius (2010) focuses on the rise of the “new” middle class. The writer says that the new way of living, unlike the old middle class norms, allows them to demonstrate their newly gained wealth through consumption at the highest level (Brosius 2010: 2). Baviskar and Ray (2011) talk about the changes brought about by the globalization, explaining how the politics of the 1970s which was marked by the demand of roti, kapda aur makaan (food, clothing, shelter) is now replaced by the demand for bijli, sadak, pani (power, roads, water supply). On a similar note Vincent also tries to define the “new” middle class. She says that the “new middle class” is but one section of a much larger diversified class that includes a “lower middle class” that continues to depend on public sector job opportunities. It is the “new” middle class, she further elaborates, this new segment, which is globalized, highly educated, professional, and upwardly mobile (Baviskar and Ray 2011: 168). Thus, the key factors which emerge through these studies which mark the definitional character of the new middle class are the changes caused

70

Chapter Four

by globalization. These changes can be seen as new job opportunities which have provided them the provision of accessibility to consumerism on a global level. Recognizing the changes brought about by globalization, these works talk about the socially mobile, professional, and consumerist population as the “new middle class”. Some of these works present a very ambiguous picture of the middle class in India today. We can witness a constant dilemma in the middle class individual which has been discussed at length in these books. This is evident in the gaps within the literature on the middle class since the 1990s, defining its newness and using the term “new middle class” for it. Verma (1998), for instance, mainly focuses on the idealization of the period before liberalization as morally responsible and correct. His work symbolizes a critique of the middle class consumerism which accelerated after the 1990s. His work thus symbolizes only a critique of liberalization. Thus the study limits itself as being only an account which stands in between defining the changes and not really getting into who the new middle classes are. The majority of the works talks about the changes but do not get into the framework of a clear definition of the “new middle class”. Similarly, Fernandes (2006) writes about the idea of middle classes in the post LPG era. Although her work defines the details of the changes evident in the lifestyle of the middle classes in India in the post-liberal era, the definition of the newness in the term “new middle class” nonetheless is not very clear. This becomes even more unclear when she contends that this class is in a fluid state. This dilemma becomes still more prominent when Saavala, although talking about the newly socially mobile into the “new” middle class regime, also tries to show how there is a constant negotiation between the middle class and the changes brought by globalization be it at the workplace or in personal endeavour like marriage. Fernandes (2006) also in her work constantly raises the question whether consumerism can be regarded as the defining factor of the new middle class. Then again, on the question of the effect of globalization on the middle class, another query comes up which again questions the term “new middle class”. This is because the definition including consumerism and recent gainers of upward social mobility does not include the numerous households and individuals who aspire to be “new middle class” (both consumerist and socially mobile) but lack one of the two defining features. This leaves both the “recent” and “consumerist” from the new middle class regime on the threshold (Ganguly-Scrace 2001). However, these works do represent the changes brought about by globalization and try to define the middle class as a “transformed” and

The “New” Middle Class in India

71

“new” middle class but there is surely an ambiguity prevailing in defining the middle class in India today. Thus these works limit themselves to the concepts which if looked at through the lens of empirical reality will fail in presenting the exact picture of what actually defines middle class. Thus, the question that can be raised here is how new is this concept of new middle class? Whether these definitions of the middle class are valid can be questioned. This is evident from a study among alumni of a reputable University in Delhi in order to understand the nuances of the conceptual dilemmas. The criterion used to identify people as a sample of the study was that they had all gained higher education, and they were the first generation of their families to enter the job market. Thus this work aims to explore the empirical realities to examine the validity of the factors which these works have frequently used to define the term “new middle class”.

Empirical Realities The aim here is to present five cases of individuals who have achieved middle class status by entering into occupations on the middle rung of the occupational hierarchy in Indian society. After presenting these cases, an attempt will be made to see to what extent these cases fit the definitions of the new middle classes presented by earlier works.

Case 1 The first case study which was done covers a story of a man who hails from the interior of Uttar Pradesh. The name of his village is Tilai Bazar, Ghumpur in the district of Allahabad. He belongs to a caste which has been historically deprived and discriminated against on the economic and social front for ages. His academic qualifications include an MPhil degree from a very reputable university. His present post is as a civil servant in Uttar Pradesh but his journey to this post has not been an easy affair. His childhood memories are not of playing and having a leisurely life but of working in the fields to gain a meagre amount for mere survival. But the bright part of his childhood was that his studies continued in the village school. When he went on to higher studies, his struggle became harder as he had to travel a very long distance to attend college. Along with college he had to work part time in the fields to add to the family income. But a drastic change came in his life when he decided to move to Delhi for higher studies. This idea of going to Delhi and studying created a panic in the family as one hand which added to the family income would be cut off.

72

Chapter Four

Also, there would be additional expenditure if he went and studied in Delhi. In spite of all the challenges and worries, he came to Delhi to fulfil his dream of becoming an IAS officer. His entrance in the global and competitive lifestyle of Delhi gave him the incentive to work hard so that he could achieve his dreams. As finances were a challenge, he had to choose an area of Delhi which he now recalls as unhealthy and unbearable, for the room rent which he could afford was only available there. “Now if I go back to stay there,” he said, “it would be impossible for me to survive for even an hour, but the most precious days of my life were spent there only. It was in this environment that I prepared for the dream university for my higher studies.” The university was a dream comes true because of the financial support it provided under the Rajeev Gandhi National Fellowship programme. He got admission in this university in 2007 but could not clear UPSC prelims. The RGNF scholarship scheme became a helping hand for him and now he could support his family also with that. But his success came to him when he obtained a job in the Uttar Pradesh State civil service. This job brought him into the realm of those groups of people who have access to global amenities. But when asked where he now locates himself in the Indian class stratification, his answer was that he was not a part of the middle class even with the job he was doing. According to him, being middle class is being “Sanskritized” which can only come with the capital you possess by birth. He said that with the occupation he could gain a respectable position in his caste and community but faced a lot of subjugation still from the upper caste community. But he proudly says that he has become an inspiration for the future generation of his community. Commenting on whether he is a middle class citizen of India or not, he says that he is not a part of that consumerist class. He voiced his concern that since the 1990s the public sector has declined and thus job opportunities have decreased. He sees a negative effect of consumerism in his life. He says that he still has to think hard to meet the demands of all the family members on the level of the middle class consumer as he is the only person earning in his entire joint family. While revealing the life situation and the struggles he has to face today too, there was a refusal from his side to call himself a new middle class Indian citizen.

Case 2 The second case study tried to encapsulate the life of another man which was full of struggles at every juncture of his life and still remained so in spite of gaining a job at officer level in a central government

The “New” Middle Class in India

73

institution. He hails from the district of Palamau in Jharkhand and belongs to the Chamar caste community. He grew up in Kolkata where his father was a worker in a factory. However, when his father was forced to take voluntary retirement due to mechanization of the factory, they had to move back to Japla, in the Palamau district. His father took up a job as a vendor of satthu or roasted gram flour there. This was barely helping them to meet the basic needs of the whole family. Regardless of the poor conditions at home he was determined to study in the school nearby. In the school, along with doing excellently in studies, he also had the vision of being a leader. In Patna he went to study at a college. The situation at the hostels for dalits was so bad that, he said, he had to move to rented accommodation. During his undergraduate days, the financial situation of his family became worse, and he had to go to Silvasa and take up a job as a watchman there. But soon he had to leave the job as he was frustrated at being abused by his employer for his reading and studying habit. Going through all this did not lead him to stop studying. He passed his graduation and master’s degree with a first class. He then proceeded to a BEd degree and MPhil from two very reputable universities. He was able to try for a job as an ad hoc lecturer in one of the institutions only because he concealed his caste, but now he has a central government job in the labour department and is posted in Jaipur. This is the road he travelled to settle down with a job and qualify for a position in the Indian middle class. But in regard to whether he is middle class or not he presents a very different picture. He first of all questions the fixity of the definition of the middle class. According to him it is a very fluid concept which includes many dimensions such as occupation, lifestyle, and educational qualification. He says that all these criteria are for him vaguely met in his life. When asked about the consumerist behaviour of his lifestyle, he revealed some different realities. According to him in India most of the classes are meeting their needs and aspiration with fake brands available as cheap replacements for the global brands. On the other front, according to him, being socially mobile and getting a job also is not enough for him to describe himself as middle class. This is, as he explains, because he still does not own land or a house of his own. The accessibility to all these elements though seems easy as there are a wide variety of loans available, but even that does not help. Ultimately he says that it is a very difficult and distant goal which he as the first generation job receiver can achieve and without this he cannot dare to call himself a middle class citizen of India.

74

Chapter Four

Case 3 The next study is of a person who belongs to an upper caste Kayastha family of Bihar in Rajgir but his father being only a fourth-class government servant left the family of four siblings always living hand to mouth. As they lived in Rajgir, a small town in Bihar, the respondent’s schooling was only at a government school. Although the financial situation was a difficult one, he could manage to move to a university nearby to pursue his graduate course. There was a constant reminder in his mind that in order to fulfil the aspirations he had cherished as a child, he had to study and then get a “good” job and very quickly get “settled”. In this respect, though he was a commerce student and could have pursued an MBA or CA, he decided against it and went to university to study Japanese language as it promised scope for a better job in the private sector. This course, he said, he chose because he felt he would get time to concentrate on government jobs which he cherished right from his childhood as they were the only key to find a place in a stable class situation. Just after finishing masters in the Japanese language he got a job in a bank as a Probationary Officer. While doing the bank job he said that he had no time for “life”. The job was so hectic that he could hardly think about recreational activities and his other interests. Thus he kept on trying for another job, and now he is working in another post as Inspector of Customs in Pondicherry. However, he is now also trying for the Civil Services Examination again for a better job opportunity. This constant trying for a better job is validated when he explains the nature of middle class by this line: “Middle class is the class who always wants to get more.” He further talks about the way he manages his expenditure. He says that he cannot think about things which are expensive. He also mentions another aspect of the importance of saving money by cutting out extra expenses. He says that the money which is saved will be used to fulfil his dream of becoming a filmmaker.

Case 4 Another case study is of the life of a man who belonged to the small town of Saharsa in Bihar. He came from a government school in Saharsa. After school, he wanted to pursue medical studies. His family even managed to collect some money and send him to a coaching centre. But after paying for highly expensive coaching in Delhi and living expenses his family could not manage to support him financially. Failure in the

The “New” Middle Class in India

75

medical examination and lack of financial support from his family compelled him to work to meet his expenses so he started to give tuition to children in Lajpat Nagar which paid him the meagre amount of 70 rupees for an hour of hard work. Determined to build his future and his dream of higher studies he changed from the medical to the arts stream. He took exams at a reputable university in Delhi for a language course and passed successfully. Although the university provided him with cheap hostel facilities, he was again bound to undertake tuition to meet his extra expenditure. He says that along with the studies, giving tuition was taking a toll on his studies. Sometimes tuition in posh areas like Sainik Farms were humiliating too and he eventually refused to continue and this made him more determined to look for a job which would bring him both money and respect. As he was in the last days of his course he got a job as a guide which brought him a good fortune but constant pressure from family for a “stable” job made him start preparation for government jobs. In 2009, he got a job in a department of CAG as an auditor in Guwahati. Then he changed his job to become an Excise Inspector in 2011 and worked for sixteen months there. After that, he took up a job as Customs Officer at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport where he is working now. But his struggle for a more “stable” and “reputable” job has still not come to an end. He is still preparing for UPSC to gain himself a first class job. On the question of being a consumer or not and at what level, he said that the salary of Rs 50,000–60,000 can also not help him buy a house of his choice along with the other expenses. He mentions the expensive education and hospitals. He says “lifestyle has become cheaper but creating asset is becoming impossible”. Giving a parallel of a market situation he says that 200 cars sold does not mean that 200 new owners have emerged. He says he wants to be a part of the Golf Course Society, but he cannot as he lacks other things in spite of gaining a job. He mentions his limitations to have access to world class amenities like eating or clothing or travelling as he cannot afford to maintain all of that all through the month if he wants to.

Case 5 The next case study is of a person who has an MPhil and is working in a non-government organization as a Research Officer. His father was a rickshaw puller but a very visionary person who made him study in spite of difficult situations. Without going into the details of his life’s journey, I note that he says he is middle class because he aspires to things he wishes to achieve and he is going through a constant struggle. He shares very

76

Chapter Four

interesting facts from his life when he mentions his relation to consumerism. He mentions one instance: though the company provides him with three-star hotel accommodation yet when it comes to personal spending on food he searches for a dhaba (small eatery) nearby because eating in a three-star hotel is still not an idea he can digest and afford as he has many other basic responsibilities in respect to his family in the village and his wife in this city which is becoming more expensive every day. On a lighter note, he shares that though he has a car he cannot afford to take it to the office because the parking rent per month is 1,200 rupees which he cannot afford to spend on mere parking and thus prefers to ride a bike. With these three case studies, we can analyse the two major factors which define the new middle class character: consumerism and social mobility. The case studies can be studied in the light of a theoretical approach.

Situating Empirical Realities in Theoretical Debates The present available literatures on the middle class in India as discussed in the previous part of this paper have started using the new middle class terminology to mark the different character of the middle classes since the 1990s economic reforms. The major defining features of the middle class were the new job opportunities and upward mobility through jobs which gives access to global consumption. But we have also come across gaps and limitations in these studies. Thus the ambiguity of the idea of the new middle class becomes an issue. This ambiguous nature of the idea of new middle class becomes prominent with the narrative analysis of the five case studies. The five case studies which have been studied here bring up a very different picture of middle class features to the one presented by the works dealing with the topic of new middle class. These narratives show that people who have just entered the middle class from a working class background experience a dilemma in conceptualizing themselves as middle class. A trend in all these narratives can be seen that although there is an aspiration for consumption there is a limitation to that in every case study. In all five cases their income is used mainly to access the basic amenities of life. This contradiction between the conceptual explanations of new middle class in terms of newness in lifestyle with world class consumerism and the reality seen in these case studies can be explained by Bourdieu (1984): “there is an economy of cultural goods, but it has a specific logic. Sociology endeavours to establish the conditions in which the consumers of cultural goods, and their taste for them are produced, and at the same time to

The “New” Middle Class in India

77

describe the different ways of appropriating such of these objects as are regarded at a particular moment as works of art, and the social conditions of the constitution of the mode of appropriation that is considered legitimate.” This logic is explained in the statement that “Taste classifies and it classifies the classifier” (Bourdieu 1984: 7). The choice which an individual makes defines his class category. High, middle and low classes are stratified in terms of possession of different forms of capital, mainly cultural capital. Cultural capital can be defined as various non-financial assets such as education, physical appearance, recreational reading, listening to music and theatre, and various other aspects which popularly define a “cultured person” (Bourdieu 1973: 83). This cultural capital is transmitted to the individual character by family. Bourdieu’s idea of distinction captures the idea that one’s birth in a certain class determines one’s choices and aspirations. These options in turn differentiate the different classes. Thus this tends to become a cyclical process where there is no scope for getting out of the circle. He actually discriminates between middle class and working class in terms of consumption. Middle class, in Bourdieu’s view, were those who maintained the status by keeping themselves away from other cultures. They appeared to exclude themselves by living in exclusive areas engaging in distinctive forms of consumption, whereas for the working class, he says, the consumption pattern is more according to popular taste (by which he meant the ethos of ordinary circumstances of life, thus reducing of the things of art to the things of life). Thus the approach to consumption is different for middle class and working class. This he tries to prove by giving an example of understanding paintings. He says that a particular painting can be praised and liked by those who are well informed about the historical background and understand the logic behind that painting. A person who is not aware of that kind of knowledge will not be able to relate to that painting. This is because, according to Bourdieu, this particular information is embedded in the cultural capital which one inherits from one’s family by birth. Thus there is a prominent distinction between those who understand the painting as they have that kind of knowledge imparted through family and others who do not have that kind of background. Taking a clue from this view we may analyse class characteristics of individuals in our case studies. All five individuals had a good job but had very different views about consumption. In the first case study, the civil servant has access to world class amenities but has to meet the primary needs of the big joint family of which he is the sole bread earner. All the case studies show individuals failing to carry consumerism in the pure

78

Chapter Four

aesthetic sense which Bourdieu describes as middle class characteristics, or rather their tendency as consumers is centred on basic necessities.

Conclusion The first part of this chapter focuses on a discussion of the middle class characteristics which took a sharp turn in the post 1990s era and then were designated as “new middle class”. The main argument of the paper lies in questioning the definition of this new terminology. The markers of the newness of the new middle class characteristics (like acquiring a job and consumption in the global market) have been questioned constantly in this paper. The reality seems to challenge these markers very explicitly and thus reveals the conceptual dilemmas evident in these works on the new middle class. The first-generation entrant into the jobs market may be in a job and receive a handsome salary but fail to have convincing access to world class amenities. The consumerist tendency which has been presented by these individuals when studied in the light of the concept of the distinction by Bourdieu (1984) stands in no relation to the consumption pattern of the middle class as explained by him. We can conclude that the markers which define middle class in present day India are ambiguous in defining the newness of the new middle class.

References Appadurai, Arjun. 1997. “Discussion: Fieldwork in the Era of Globalization”, Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 22, No. 1 (June), pp. 115–118. Baviskar, Amita, and Raka Ray. 2011. Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Classes, New Delhi: Routledge. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1973. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction”, in R. Brown (ed.), Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change: Papers in the Sociology of Education, London: Tavistock. —. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brosius, Christiane. 2010. India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure Consumption and Property, New Delhi: Routledge. Deshpande, Satish. 2003. Contemporary India: A Sociological Review, New Delhi: Penguin. Donner, Henrike. 2012. Being Middle-class in India: A Way of Life, New Delhi: Routledge (Contemporary South Asia Series).

The “New” Middle Class in India

79

Donner, Henrike, and Geert De Neve (eds). 2011. The Meaning of the Local: Politics of Place in Urban India, Abingdon: UCL Press. Fernandes, Leela. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ganguly-Scrase, Ruchira. 2001. Global Issues, Local Contexts: The Rabi Das of West Bengal, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan. Joshi, Sanhay. 2001. Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press India. Kamat, A.R. 1981. “Education and Social Change amongst the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 16, No. 31, pp. 1279–1284. Mazzarella, William. 1999. Middle Class, at http://www.soas.ac.uk/csasfiles/keywords/Mazzarella-middleclass.pdf Meyer, Christian, and Nancy Birdsall. 2012. New Estimates of India’s Middle Class Technical Note, Center for Global Development. Misra, B.B. 1961. The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times, Delhi: Oxford University Press. National Council of Applied Economic Research, Annual Report 2005– 2006. Saavala, Minna. 2010. Middle Class Moralities: Everyday Struggle over Belonging and Prestige in India, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Publications. Shukla, R. 2010. How India Earns, Spends and Saves: Unmasking the Real India, New Delhi: Sage Publications and NCAER CMCR. Singh, Gurchain. 1985. The New Middle Class in India, Jaipur: Rawat Publications. Verma, Pawan K. 1998. The Great Indian Middle Class, New Delhi: Penguin Books India.

PART 2: THE INDIAN MIDDLE CLASSES, THE STATE, GLOBALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER FIVE INDIA’S MIDDLE CLASSES AND THE POST-LIBERALIZATION STATE: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE LEELA FERNANDES

The post-liberalization period in India that began in the early 1990s, marked by phases of economic reforms, has generated significant interest and debates on the size and nature of India’s middle classes. Such debates have included scholarly and public debates on the size of India’s middle classes and the extent to which the middle class has participated in consumerism and the ways in which the middle class has sought to assert itself politically in new ways through movements such as the anticorruption movement. A key issue that underlies scholarly debates on the middle classes is the question of definition and measurement of the middle classes. The middle classes in comparative contexts have been historically difficult to define given the internal variation between various parts of this social group (Misra 1961; Wacquant 1991). In the context of economic liberalization, definitions of the middle classes have often centred on consumption and household income or on the emerging sites of new economy employment within the service sector. Such conceptions provide important insights into the relationship between the middle classes and private capital – both in terms of analysis of trends in private sector employment as well as in terms of market-oriented consumption (Mazzarella 2003; Upadhya 2011). This essay seeks to expand our understanding of India’s middle classes by examining the relationship between India’s new middle classes and the state in the post-liberalization period. The new middle class in India is specifically associated with a cultural and political outlook that has embraced liberalization and rejected the state-managed economy associated with the early decades of Indian independence. In dominant public discourses, the old middle classes are associated with a strong form of state dependency while the new middle

India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State

83

class is associated with the choices and opportunities of private sector employment. The Nehruvian state and subsequent regimes in the first decades of India’s economic development played a central role in materially creating and shaping the middle class through state subsidies for higher (and English language) education and the promotion of public sector employment. The expanded Indian state itself was the primary source of employment for middle class Indians, thus intensifying this middle class dependency. Conventional portrayals depict the new middle class as a social group that is now tied to the expansion of private capital and new economy jobs rather than the old state-dependent middle class. This essay questions this assumption of a break in the relationship between the state and the Indian middle class and argues instead that the relationship between the state and the middle class has been restructured in important ways in the post-liberalization period. Recent research in the social sciences has pointed to the need to examine the emergence of new state activities in the context of economic liberalization (Levy 2006). Such scholarship has looked at the relationship between the state, business and workers. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which the relationship between India’s middle classes and the state has been restructured in the post-liberalization periods of the mid-1980s and 1990s. Drawing on an analysis of recent trends in contemporary India, the essay presents a theoretical analysis of this relationship between the state and the middle classes. The essay will focus in particular on (1) how middle class-state relations play a role in shaping the post-liberalization state developmental agenda and (2) the tensions and the strains that arise through conflicts that emerge between this postliberalization state agenda and the broader developmental multi-class demands on the state. Through this analysis, the essay aims to reflect on the importance of understanding the political role of the middle class in debates on development and democratization that shape political science and related disciplines. In the context of political science, recent scholarship has called attention to new state practices that arise in comparative post-liberalization contexts. Jonah Levy for instance has argued that such state activities have shifted from a market-steering to a market-supporting orientation. Drawing on research on advanced industrialized countries, he argues that one of the biggest sources of new state activities lies with the agenda of economic liberalization (for instance in varying patterns in which the state in countries such as France, Japan, and Germany has pursued liberalizing reforms). While Levy’s comparative project focuses solely on advanced industrialized countries, recent research has begun to point to the role of

84

Chapter Five

the state in shaping economic reforms in India.1 Thus, existing research has already shown, for example, that local state governments have played a central role in driving liberalization (Rudolph and Rudolph 2001). However, the specificities of post-colonial, late industrializing cases such as India call for a closer and more systematic examination of the nature and extent of such state activities. An initial examination of the changing role of the Indian state points to three central trends. First, the policies of economic reform have produced new state activities as the state has sought to direct economic liberalization and manage the social and political conflicts that have been sparked by economic change. Second, while comparative research has illustrated that liberalization leads to a shift of the state’s activities from an interventionist to a regulatory role (Levy 2006; Rudolph and Rudolph 2001), the Indian state has also demonstrated a strong pattern of regulatory failure (Kapur and Mehta 2004 & 2008). Thus, an analysis of liberalization needs to guard against a conflation between processes of privatization and state regulatory failure. In other words, the failure of the state to provide services and to develop effective regulatory frameworks of governance has often provided a space that has been occupied by private actors and privatized practices. Stuart Corbridge has called this the scarcity of the state (2005). This state scarcity has produced a form of unplanned privatization associated with the middle classes and has ranged from middle class citizens needing to turn to private supplies of water and electricity when the state has failed to provide adequate infrastructure (Kale 2014) to the privatization of land and space when the state has not provided effective regulatory structures for urban development (Fernandes 2004). Finally, a third pattern of state activities in the post-liberalization period has simply been the continuation of the older regimes of state-led development. Thus, the liberalizing state co-exists with the developmental state in ways that require a closer investigation of the interaction between these two sets of state activities. This layered and shifting nature of state activities in the postliberalization period is shaped by what Atul Kohli has termed the “multiclass” nature of the Indian state (2004). Given this multi-class nature of the state, historically the political economy of the Indian state has been shaped by complex state–class relations that have rested on shifting class coalitions. What I am currently trying to do is to think through these three patterns of state activities using my earlier research on urban politics, the middle classes, and social inequality. Scholarship on the political economy of the early decades of the Indian state has emphasized several successive patterns of class coalitions that have shaped state practices.

India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State

85

Vivek Chibber has emphasized relations between the state and the capitalist class, arguing that while the state and capitalists were in agreement regarding the need for state intervention at the dawn of India’s independence, the capitalist class was able to block the emergence of an effective developmental state (2003). The Indian state in Chibber’s analysis essentially favoured protections for business rather than an export-led developmentalist strategy that would have compelled Indian business to face global competition. While Chibber’s work suggests that this class–state relationship that unfolded during the run-up to Indian independence essentially determined the future of India’s developmental strategies, other scholars have argued that varying class coalitions have shaped the trajectory of India’s development. These coalitions have centred on roughly three periods. In the 1950s and 60s, a coalition of urban and rural elites coalesced behind an urban oriented industrial strategy. The middle classes were invested in the control of state resources and authority as state managers, while landed interests were protected by the state against the threat of land redistribution. In the 1970s and 1980s, newly emerging agrarian classes, alternatively termed “bullock capitalists” (Rudolph & Rudolph 1987) or the vernacular middle classes (Hasan 1998) increasingly began to mobilize and press for benefits and resources from the state. Thus, by the early 1990s, it had become commonplace to speak of the political rise of previously marginalized groups such as the Other Backward Castes (OBCs). The questions that I raise in this essay are: (1) how these class coalitions are shifting in the post-reforms period since the 1990s and (2) how the state is attempting to manage these shifting coalitions. The strains of managing the state’s multi-class nature in the post-liberalization period since the 1990s are such that state activities have included practices from the three patterns that have been presented in the preceding discussion: (1) instances of state scarcity, (2) new state activities that are shaped by emerging coalitions and new class actors such as the new middle class, and (3) traditional developmental state activities designed to incorporate marginalized groups through the targeted provision of benefits and services. The state has oscillated between these patterns as it has tried to manage the competing demands on its resources. This essay is a preliminary attempt to address these patterns that shape state-middle class relations. The essay begins by addressing the ideological practices that the state has used to manage these strains. The essay then analyzes the centrality of middle class-state relations in shaping the post-liberalization developmental state agenda. In my research on the rise of India’s new middle class, I have argued that this social group

86

Chapter Five

represents an elite layer of the Indian middle classes that has helped to expand the national ideological and cultural consensus in support of economic liberalization (Fernandes 2006). This new middle class has thus become a significant actor in the effort to create a new pro-liberalization class coalition. Thus, for example, the growing scholarship on intensifying urban spatial inequality in the post-liberalization period illustrates emerging coalitions between private developers and the new middle class and the ability of these coalitions to get state support for urban development projects that cater to the interests of both private capital and new middle class consumer tastes. New state activities in this period include state support (financially and through political support) for these emerging forms of unequal urban development. However, this new middle class identity continues to sit in tension with both subaltern social groups and other sections of the middle classes that have not been incorporated into these new models of economic growth and that continue to rely on older state-led developmental practices. The result is the creation of tensions and the strains that arise through the conflicts between new postliberalization state agenda and the broader developmental multi-class demands that rest on older developmental state practices.

State Ideological Practices Contemporary debates on the size and nature of India’s middle classes are in critical ways ideological debates that are shaped by postliberalization political discourses that have emerged since the 1990s. Recent research has shown that the media have played a central role in shaping such discourses (Chaudhuri 2001; Mazarella 2003). Public rhetoric on the size of India’s middle classes has mostly centred on the potential consumer market that this group represents for both Indian and multinational businesses. This construction of the middle class has been consolidated by the self-identification of large sections of the middle classes with new patterns of consumption. The result is a tendency to locate consumption as a site of individual, privatized strategies that are expanding with liberalisation. This section of the essay seeks to call attention to the role of the state in shaping such ideological discourses. Specifically, the essay argues that India’s new middle class is part of a state-led development regime that cannot be solely understood by focusing on questions of private capital (that is, in terms of an understanding of the new middle class as defined by employment in the private sector or the role of the middle class consumption of consumer goods). In contemporary social science research, the dominant trend is to focus

India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State

87

questions of the state and economic development on marginalized socioeconomic groups (Gupta 2012). Recent debates on policies such as cash transfers, for instance, are an example of how development and welfare are identified with the poor. For example, economic liberalization in India operates through two diverse but simultaneous languages of economic development and economic growth. On the one hand, conceptions of stateled development are identified with subaltern social groups. On the other hand, state-led policies of economic liberalization deploy aspirational languages of middle class consumption as a sign of the success of such policies. These diverse languages tend to reproduce analyses which treat subaltern social groups as an object of development and the middle classes as an object of consumption (whether negatively in terms of criticisms of consumerism or positively in terms of the identification of middle class consumption with economic growth). What is concealed in this bifurcation of analyses is the way in which India’s new middle class is, in fact, part of a state-led development regime. In the post-liberalization period, the seemingly discrepant narratives of middle class consumption and subaltern sustainable development are, in fact, part of a singular set of state developmental strategies in the postliberalization period.2 At the ideological level, post-liberalization discourses on India’s middle classes are shaped in significant ways by the state. Elected officials and politicians have actively participated in the often inflated public rhetoric on the size of India’s middle class and the vast potential consumer market of this group. Prime Ministers from across the ideological range have specifically deployed a narrative about India’s expanding middle class as a central platform in governmental efforts to market India’s reforms and to draw in private capital. This has ranged from Rajiv Gandhi’s early rhetoric on India’s middle classes in the 1980s through that of BJP Prime Minister Vajpayee to that of the current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Such strategies have also been deployed by Chief Ministers in states such as Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh that have effectively drawn private capital and sought to project themselves as faces of a new middle class-oriented liberalizing India. These ideological strategies are part of a deeper process in which sections of the Indian state have played a central role in recasting state-led development through reforms since the 1990s. For example, Rob Jenkins has analysed the ways in which Indian politicians were able to push through the first generation of reforms in the 1990s using a variety of informal strategies and institutions, particularly at the local and state level (Jenkins 1999). While Jenkins focuses on the hidden nature of this process, what he calls “reforms by stealth” (Jenkins 1999: 172), I have argued elsewhere that the

88

Chapter Five

new middle class has, in fact, operated as the public discursive face of state strategies of reform (Fernandes 2006). Understanding middle class consumption is, therefore, not simply an empirical question of how one measures household income or consumerism; it is a task that requires an analysis of the discursive and ideological practices that have characterized state policies of liberalization that have been initiated since the 1990s. Such ideological practices construct the middle classes as a product of the privatized realm of the market. Thus, in the post-liberalization period, the expansion of the middle classes has generally been associated with growing opportunities in growth sectors such as information technology and the service sector, rising income levels (as measured by organizations such as the NCAER) and growing consumption oriented patterns that are linked to newly available consumer goods, as well as the rise in incomes of new economy jobs. However, such a construction of the middle classes rests in uneasy tension with the socio-economic differentiation which does, in fact, characterize India’s middle classes. Such differentiation is characterized by two central sets of trends: (1) the structuring of the middle classes by social inequalities of caste, language, religion, and region; and (2) economic differentiation that is in part linked to social inequality. Anthropological research has shown that newly emerging middle classes that have used education as a means for upward mobility have not been able to gain access to stable middle class status. Large segments of educated Dalit men, for example, form part of the permanently unemployed segments of society (Jefferey et al. 2004) while employment entry to sectors such as the IT industry is structured by caste inequality (Upadhya 2011). Such upwardly mobile segments of the population who are trying to gain access to middle class status (through education and English language education in particular) or who are relatively recent entrants to middle class status, in fact, rely in significant ways on state support. The provision of education (and restrictions on access to education) and the type of education access remains a key dimension of middle class formation and for less privileged sections of the middle classes, the quality and extent of access to state provided education is an entry point to (or restriction from) middle class status. Access to state employment for instance in lower level civil service or clerical work in the public sector also remains an entry point for upwardly mobile middle classes that may be seeking to overcome inequalities of language, caste, region, and religion and large sections of the middle classes continue to depend on public sector employment (Ganguly-Scrase 2001; Sridharan 1999; Sridharan 2004). Entry to more privileged or coveted new economy jobs in the services sector or IT

India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State

89

industry are often heavily restricted by access to different forms of cultural capital such as English education, social networks and dominant forms of cultural and aesthetic knowledge (Fernandes 2006). Old and new regimes of state-led development thus continue to overlap in ways that provoke tensions between different fractions of the middle classes. Images of a new middle class as a product of market-led growth must thus be contextualized in relation to this variation within the middle classes in India. It is this structuring of access to new middle class jobs that has been a key factor that has periodically led to demand caste-based reservations in the private sector (Kumar 2004; Thimmaiah 2005). On the one hand, the debate over reservations is in this sense partly a response to the internal hierarchies within the middle classes that are intensified as the state retreats from its post-independence role of incorporating various fragments of the middle class through employment. However, the demand for private sector reservations also points to the continued political pressures on the state to continue to provide state support for large segments of the middle classes that have not been tracked into economy jobs that have produced high incomes and purchasing power for the upper tiers of the primarily urban English-educated middle classes. The issue of reservations for instance, also points to the strains on the state in managing socio-economic inequality and competing political pressures in the post-liberalization period. Such political conflicts over reservations fracture alliances between the old middle class and the new middle class in post-liberalization India in important ways.3 State rhetoric in support of reservations and state policies designed to implement such reservations reflect an attempt of the state to incorporate broader segments of middle class support for the current state developmentalist paradigm of liberalization. Critics of caste reservations have pointed to the political calculations (the politics of vote banks) that have shaped the previous Congress-led UPA government support of reservations.4 However, the deeper point lies not only with short-term electoral calculations but with the need for the Congress-led state to construct a lasting hegemonic bloc in the post-liberalization period. I use the example of the initial Congress-led government’s rhetorical support of caste reservations in the private sector to illustrate the recognition that a narrower compact between the new middle class and the state cannot provide an adequate developmental alliance in support of liberalization. Such state attempts at incorporating broader segments of the middle classes conflict with new middle class investments in the privatized accumulation and deployment of capital (social, cultural and economic) within India’s new economy. The compact between state and new middle class that is associated with liberalization

90

Chapter Five

and that appears as inevitable in public rhetoric and representations is thus fundamentally fractured by these internal hierarchies within the middle classes.

Managing the Post-Liberalization Multi-Class State Current events point to several ways in which middle class fractures and frustrations with the state are playing out in the national arena. The anti-corruption protests, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), middle class dissatisfaction with inflation and rising consumer prices, protests over the Delhi gang rape, and public discussions over alleged sexual harassment within the judiciary branch of the state are all complex manifestations of the dissatisfaction of the middle classes with the state. At one level, they point to the limitations of the post-liberalization ideological construction of a “new middle class” that has shifted its focus from the state to the market. The political and cultural entrepreneurs that publicly speak for this social group (whether in the media or through more typical forms of associational life such as newly emerging civic organizations) explicitly argue that the new middle class embodies a sharp break from past dependencies on the state (Fernandes 2006). As I have argued elsewhere, this politics of new middle class lifestyle is itself a central component of state-led liberalization (2006). This political economy of lifestyle is specifically structured by local state strategies of urban redevelopment that promote new middle class oriented models of urban life. Ethnographic research in a range of cities and urban areas has shown these strategies center on the question of land usage and highly lucrative financial deals that benefit both local state officials and private developers. An early and visible example of this was the case of the Tata Nano plant in West Bengal. The relevant dimension for the purpose of this analysis is the company’s use of eminent domain laws to take over agricultural land being used by farmers. Changes in urban development are thus an extension of similar changes in land use in rural areas and they caution against romanticizing the urban as a distinctive space. Such practices further explain the role of the state in facilitating privatization through both official, informal and sometimes illegal practices – for instance by allowing the sale of textile mills in Mumbai despite legal restrictions and working in partnership with private capital to develop new middle class oriented infrastructure (such as shopping malls, jogging strips, and elite residential complexes). Such strategies are not only examples of state responses to middle class consumer based demands; rather, they represent a set of practices and policies that engage in the material production of

India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State

91

new middle class lifestyle. Current events such as the various forms of protest that have stemmed from middle class frustrations with the state point to the stark limits of the post-liberalization narratives that have constructed the middle class in terms of a consumerist identity. Such protests in varying ways illustrate anger and frustration both with different forms of state failure as well as with the inadequacies of the post-liberalization state developmental model. If aspects of the anti-corruption movement reflect a protest against state failures, the reduction of power tariffs and water costs by the newly elected Aam Aadmi (common/ordinary man) government in Delhi are linked more to an older model of state developmental agendas that have historically provided state supports for the middle classes as well as the rural and urban poor. This latter example is in sharp contrast to the incipient privatization where segments of the middle classes have used private resources to fill state failures in the provision of basic services such as water and electricity.

Conclusion Recent events in India point to the ways in which older state models of development interact with and co-exist in uneasy ways with assumptions that the middle classes have either uniformly benefitted from or accepted a post-liberalization market-oriented model of development in which the state retreats from the provision of goods and resources. Research on the state in India has tended to neglect studies of the middle classes. This neglect risks being intensified in the post-liberalization period where the preoccupation with middle class consumer identities either overestimates the privileges of the middle classes or the prevalence of middle class consumerism (Fernandes 2006). This essay represents a series of theoretical reflections on different aspects and contradictions inherent in the state-middle class relationship in the post-liberalization period. The issues the essay has raised point to an urgent need for new research agendas that analyse different facets of relations between the middle class and the state. What is clear is that optimistic measurements of rising middle class household incomes and purchasing power on the one hand and political denouncements and cultural anxieties about middle class consumerism cannot adequately grasp the deeper fractures within the middle classes and their complex political demands on the Indian state that will serve as a central force that shapes contemporary Indian politics.

92

Chapter Five

Notes 1

The state in India has played an active role in supporting India’s successive waves of economic reforms. This active state promotion of reform has been particularly evident at the local state governmental level as state governments have actively sought foreign investment. This pro-reform's orientation of the state has been consolidated as governmental elites have developed socio-economic interests that are tied to liberalization. State elites have stood to benefit financially from processes of privatization and the expansion of state-private capital joint ventures through both official policies and unofficial practices of corruption. As political science research on the initial phase of reforms in the 1990s has shown, Indian politicians soon recognized that liberalization need not spell the end of their influence over key decisions and they have played a key role, for example, at the local level as state governments have actively pursued reforms independent of the central government. This confluence of interests has continued in subsequent generations of reforms and has led to a broader restructuring of business–state relations. However, the state has continued to play a significant role in shaping and overseeing India’s economic trajectory (Chibber 2003; Kohli 2004; Sinha 2005). 2 Some sections draw in part on my discussions in Fernandes 2006 and 2009. 3 My point is not that conflicts about caste equality and reservations are only about middle class politics. My intention is to focus on the middle class dimensions of these conflicts and the ways in which reservations are about access to upward mobility and middle class status for marginalized socio-economic groups. 4 The BJP has sought to try and create alternative bases of support (with upper castes) for instance by focusing on reservations for economically marginalized upper castes. But, as Thimmaiah notes, both the Congress and the BJP promised to introduce affirmative action in the private sector in their 2004 election manifestos (2005: 745).

References Chaudhuri, Maitrayee. 2001. “Gender and Advertisements: The Rhetoric of Globalisation”, Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 3/4, pp. 373–385. Chibber, Vivek. 2003. Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Corbridge, Stuart. 2005. Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fernandes, Leela. 2004. “The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India”, Urban Studies, Vol. 41, No.12, pp. 2415-2430. —. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ganguly-Scrase, Ruchira. 2001. Global Issues, Local Contexts: The Rabi

India’s Middle Classes and the Post-Liberalization State

93

Das of West Bengal, New Delhi: Orient Longman. Gupta, Akhil. 2012. Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hasan, Zoya. 1998. Quest for Power: Oppositional Movements and PostCongress Politics in Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jefferey, Craig, Patricia Jefferey and Roger Jefferey. 2004. “‘A Useless Thing!’ or ‘Nectar of the Gods’? The Cultural Production of Education and Young Men’s Struggles for Respect in Liberalizing North India”, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 94, No. 4, pp. 961–981. Jenkins, Rob. 1999. Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kale, Sunila. 2014. Electrifying India: Regional Economies of Development, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kapur, Devesh and Pratap Mehta. 2004. “Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half Baked Socialism to Half Baked Capitalism”, Center for International Development Harvard University, Working Paper No. 108 (September), pp. 1–49. Kapur, Devesh and Pratap Mehta. 2008. “Mortgaging the Future? Indian Higher Education”, Brookings-NCAER India Policy Forum 2007–08, Vol. 4, pp. 101–157. Kohli, Atul. 2004. State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kumar, Sanjay. 2004. “Impact of Economic Reforms on Indian Electorate”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 16 (17 April), pp. 1621–1630. Levy, Jonah (ed.). 2006. The State after Statism: New State Activities in the Age of Liberalization, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mazzarella, William. 2003. Shovelling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India. Durham: Duke University Press. Misra, B.B. 1961. The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rudolph, Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph. 1987. In Pursuit of Lakshmi: The Political Economy of the Indian State, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. —. 2001. “The Iconization of Chandrababu: Sharing Sovereignty in India’s Federal Market Economy”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXXVI, No. 18 (5–11 May), pp. 1541–1551. Sridharan, E. 1999. “Role of the State and the Market in the Indian

94

Chapter Five

Economy”, in V.A. Pai Panandiker and Ashis Nandy (eds), Contemporary India, New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill, pp.107–136. —. 2004. “The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India’s Middle Classes: Its Impact on the Politics of Liberalization in India”, India Review Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 405–428. Thimmaiah, G. 2005. “Implications of Reservations in Private Sector”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 40, No. 8 (19 February), pp.745– 749. Upadhya, Carol. 2011. “Software and the ‘New’ Middle Class in the ‘New India’”, in Amita Baviskar and Raka Ray, Elite and Everyman: The Cultural Politics of the Indian Middle Class, New Delhi: Routledge, pp. 167–192. Wacquant, Loic. 1991. “Making Class: The Middle Class(es) in Social Theory and Social Structure”, in Scott McNall, Rhonda Levine and Rick Fantasia (eds), Bringing Class Back in: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, pp. 39– 64.

CHAPTER SIX INDIA: THE MIDDLE CLASS AND ECONOMIC REFORMS ASHOK K. LAHIRI1

Introduction After the “Great Recession” of 2008–09, there was great interest about what role the Asian middle class could play in ameliorating the impact of the financial crisis – so much so that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) had a special chapter entitled “The Rise of the Indian Middle Class” in Key Indicators for the Asia and the Pacific, 2010. The middle class in Asia has attracted attention for its potential role in the global economy. In India also the middle class has made strides, but not as much as in some other Asian countries. After a discursive introduction to the definition of the middle class and the role of the middle class in economic development, this paper discusses whether the policy stance in India has given short shrift to the middle class by focusing on other income categories. I also suggest that the middle class, in turn, has failed to become a vocal interest group to steer the course of economic policies in a democratic set up.

Indian middle-class dynamics in the Asian perspective By middle class I mean people who are beyond the poverty line, but not in the category of the rich. According to the ADB, over 1.3 billion people joined the middle class in developing Asia between 1990 and 2008 (Table 6.1). The transformation, in terms of percentage point change, has been remarkable in many countries, including some of the large countries such as the People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. These three countries together managed to lift over a billion people from poverty

96

Chapter Six

or relatively poor status to the “middle class” between 1990 and 2008. India made progress, but the progress was limited and its overall rank in terms of growth in the share of the middle class in the total population of the country was 12th among 21 developing countries of Asia.2 India is a late starter compared to China. China initiated reforms under Deng Xiao Ping in 1979, almost a dozen years before India started in good earnest. And, in May, 2007, the Indian middle class made its presence felt in the public media when Newsweek reported the McKinsey Global Institute’s prediction that within a generation India would become a nation of upwardly mobile middle-class households, “consuming goods ranging from high-end cars to designer clothing”, and in two decades, surpassing Germany as the world’s fifth largest consumer market. In February 2009, The Economist also reported on the growth of the Indian middle class (Parker 2009). McKinsey estimated the Indian middle class population at 250 million in 2007; the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) predicted the membership of the class to more than double from 267 million people in 2015–16 to 547 million in 2025–26. The middle class in India has been growing, and growing faster than the population of the country, hence increasing its share in the total population, but the growth is not as fast as in some other countries in the Asian neighbourhood. The experience of East Asian countries and China demonstrates that a significant transformation of the growth process happens when people start leaving poverty and joining the middle class in millions. This drives economic activity by propelling rapid consumption growth. This is the growth “sweet spot” and according to Surjit Bhalla; a country hits this sweet spot when it achieves per capita income of about $6,000.3 The Economist Intelligence Unit projected India to hit this growth sweet spot in 2017. The excitement around 2007 about the burgeoning Indian middle class was at the same time as the country was clocking annual rates of growth well above 9% in the period from 2005 to 2008. The dip in annual growth in 2008–09 to below 7%, and then after two years of growth around 9% the steady decline to 5%, has reduced the excitement further.4

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

97

Table 6.1: Changes in the Relative and Absolute Size of the Middle Class, and Change in Aggregate Monthly Expenditure of the Middle Class by Country (1990–2008, based on household survey means), in Developing Asia Country

Armenia Azerbaijan Bangladesh Cambodia PRC Georgia India Indonesia Kazakhstan Kyrgyz Republic

Percentage point change in population share

Change in population in million

76.5 35.1 8.3 24.0 61.4 4.0 12.8 46.3 -6.7

2.3 3.1 18.5 4.0 844.6 0.0 205.0 113.7 -2.2

Change in yearly expenditure (millions of US dollars) 3.6 4.5 24.3 5.8 1,825.0 1.3 256.0 168.1 -19.8

-14.9

-0.1

0.0

Lao PDR 28.9 1.9 Malaysia 5.6 6.5 Mongolia 24.4 1.0 Nepal -5.8 -0.6 Pakistan 36.5 65.9 Philippines 12.0 23.6 Sri Lanka -10.1 -0.9 Tajikistan -3.9 0.3 Thailand 17.6 17.2 Turkmenistan 15.2 0.9 Viet Nam 57.4 49.3 Note: PRC = People’s Republic of China; Lao PDR = Lao People’s Democratic Republic Source: Chun (2010)

2.4 22.3 1.9 -0.5 80.5 48.3 -0.4 -0.5 55.3 9.0 77.2

A Matter of Definition As in Table 6.1, the ADB in its special chapter entitled “The Rise of the Indian Middle Class” in Key Indicators for the Asia and the Pacific,

98

Chapter Six

2010 defines the middle class as $2–20 per person per day in 2005 PPP dollar. But, this is not the definition used by all in the analysis of the middle class. Harris (2007) reported a curious fact: in response to a question in a survey conducted in the poorest parts of Bangalore, the vast majority of the respondents categorised themselves as “middle class”. The penetration of middle-class values and aspirations is an important development in India, but self-categorization of people is not very useful for defining the Indian middle class. Similarly, the sociologist’s traditional definition of “sufficient education, membership in a white-collar occupation, or apparent embrace of bourgeois values” has its own appeal but may be a bit unwieldy and not very useful for analysis of admittedly “narrow” economic development problems. The point of giving these definitions is to clarify that alternative definitions exist and the numbers change with the definitions. A workable definition of the middle class with substantial appeal, for example (Parker 2009), is people with roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter. In 2011, this would leave out the poorest with income below Rs 27.2 per person per day and Rs 33.3 per person per day in rural and urban areas respectively. So it would put the “aspirers” just above the poverty line, who typically are small shopkeepers, farmers with their own modest landholdings or semi-skilled industrial and service workers. They have enough food to eat and might own items such as a small television, a propane stove, and an electric rod for heating water, but may not be counted as middle class. The middle class consists of the seekers and strivers, whose annual household income according to McKinsey Global Institute (2007), in purchasing power parity terms, is equivalent to somewhere between $23,000 and $118,000.5 The NCAER (2005) defines the middle class as comprising households with annual income between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 10 lakh at 2001–02 prices.6 Birdsall et al. (2000) defined the middle class as those with incomes between 75% and 125% of the median income in each country. Banerjee and Duflo (2008), on the other hand, identified the “middle class” in developing countries as those living on between $2 and $10 a day. Ravallion (2009) defines middle class as “those who live above the median poverty line of developing countries but are still poor by US standards”. The size of the middle class changes with the definition of the class itself. For example, Meyer and Birdsall (2012), using 2005 PPP minimum and maximum thresholds of $10 and $50 and National Sample Survey 2009–10 data estimate the Indian middle class in 2009–10 at less than 6%

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

99

of the population or just under 70 million people, which is less than half of what NCAER estimates for 2004–05. However, what is important to note is that while the pace of change of the size of the middle class may change with the definitions, the direction of movement of the class size is not sensitive to alternative definitions. Just for illustration, the NCAER estimated that the middle class grew, in terms of households, from 4.5 million in 1995–96 to 10.8 million in 2001–02, 16.4 million in 2005–06 and projected it to increase to 28.4 million in 2009–10. Beinhocker et al. (2007) projected the middle class to increase to 128 million households by 2025. Ravallion (2009) estimated the middle class population to have grown from 146.8 million to 263.7 million between 1990 and 2005, which again, assuming an unchanged household size of 5, is a rise from 29.4 million to 52.7 million. While NCAER estimates indicate an annual rate of growth of almost 14% between 1995–96 and 2005–06 in the ranks of the Indian middle class, Ravallion’s (2009) estimate for the period 1990 to 2005 indicates an annual growth rate of only about 4%. By the historical standards of India itself, the middle class in the country has made great strides in the last couple of decades. The pace of this stride is dependent on how the middle class is defined, but it is generally agreed that no matter how the middle class is defined, there has been a swelling of its ranks both in absolute and relative terms.

Is the Middle Class Important? Before examining the dynamics of the Indian middle class and economic reforms, it is relevant to examine whether and why the middle class is important for economic growth and development. The middle class can be expected to increase with economic growth. The tide of growth lifts many boats, and with increases in per capita income, many households may be required to escape the shackles of poverty or their “aspirer” status and migrate to the middle class consisting of seekers and strivers. But will it reinforce the growth process itself through higher savings and investment, including in human capital, support the reform process, and result in better governance with more transparency and greater accountability and less corruption? Hard empirical estimates of this effect of a growing middle class on the growth and reform process itself are complicated by differences in the definition of the middle class in different developing countries. Yet there is substantial evidence that the middle class is critical for unleashing selfsustained growth.

100

Chapter Six

As the Asian Development Bank (2010) reports: “Economic historians such as Adelman and Morris (1967) and Landes (1998), among others, have argued that the middle class was a driving force in the faster pace of economic growth in the United Kingdom and continental Europe in the 19th century.” It also reports how Easterly and Levine (2001) conclude that a “middle-class” consensus “facilitates economic growth by allowing society to agree on the provision of public goods critical to economic growth. These include goods such as public education, public health services, and physical infrastructure (e.g. roads and electricity).” A priori it may be argued that the growth of the middle class in India, and hence policies to accelerate its development, are important for the following three reasons. First is a significant point about putting development on a sustainable path. Development is mostly about productivity growth. The productivity improvement brought about by the replacement of walking by bicycles, of pack oxen by tractors or even bullock carts, or hand irrigation by mechanized pumps can be enormous. In a developing country, given the enormous scale of the task, the government cannot finance these substitutions on its own. A growing middle class by investing themselves can bring these changes without government support. Brazilian economist Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca describes members of the middle class as “people who are not resigned to a life of poverty, who are prepared to make sacrifices to create a better life for themselves but who have not started with life’s material problems solved because they have material assets to make their lives easy.” While there is a sense of hopelessness and resignation among the extremely poor, the middle class is a more determined lot, those who belong to this class are ready to struggle and better their lot on their own, by struggling as well as educating their children, albeit also because they are better endowed and better equipped than the super-needy. Second, and related to the first point, is the fact that a larger middle class can increase savings, so necessary for financing domestic investment without balance of payments problems. The middle class, unlike the poor, have some means to save and, unlike the rich, do not indulge in conspicuous consumption. Third, middle class people promote human capital accumulation and generate the entrepreneurs who create jobs and foster productivity. They are acutely aware of the fact that income or value of a property can fluctuate from year to year or even month to month. Human capital is fairly robust in the face of such changes. Thus, middle class people traditionally put a lot of prominence on educating their children. The

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

101

government can provide schools. The poor quality of education such schools provide and what they actually should is well known through various reports. As ASER (2013) reports, “At the All India level private school enrolment has been rising steadily since 2006. The percentage of 6 to 14 year olds enrolled in private schools rose from 18.7% in 2006 to 25.6% in 2011. This year (2012) this number has further increased to 28.3%.” ASER (2013) predicts that by 2018, half the children will be in private schools. While even some of the poor are sending their children to private schools in search of better education, it is almost the entire middle class who are patronizing the private schools. Furthermore, the importance of the socio-economic, educational background of children’s families, the aspirations of parents and additional support for learning in determining children’s educational performance is well known. Thus, while there is no alternative to making all-out efforts for improving the education of children from poor households, the importance of promoting educational facilities for the middle class as well for rapid improvements in human capital in the country cannot be overemphasized.

Differing Speeds of Middle-class Formation The middle class in India has made progress in swelling its ranks but at different speeds in different periods. Data for household consumption, used for identifying the middle class in most studies, is available primarily from the nine quinquennial (five-yearly) surveys organized by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) starting from the 27th Round (October 1972–September 1973) and ending in the 68th Round (July 2011–June 2012).7 Apart from these NSSO surveys, NCAER’s Market Information Survey of Households (MISH) conducted in 1985–86 and National Household Survey of Income and Expenditure conducted in 2004–05 also provide valuable data for classifying the Indian middle class and estimating its size. According to the NCAER (2005) study already alluded to, the size of the middle class grew at an annual rate of 15.5% between 1995–96 and 2001–02, and 11.1% between 2001–02 and 2005–06. According to calculations made by Surjit Bhalla, the author of Second Among Equals: The Middle Class Kingdoms of China and India, the proportion of the population in India belonging to the middle class, after remaining around 1.55% until the mid-1970s, increased to about 2.5% by 1985, and then to 4.5% by 1990, 12.5% by 2000, and 25% by 2007. Growth rates for the middle class according to Bhalla’s annual numbers are indeed different

102

Chapter Six

from NCAER’s numbers, but the important point is that the growth of the middle class varies from period to period. The early 50s and 60s saw the pursuit of socialist policies with an emphasis on state-led growth on the public sector achieving “commanding heights of the economy” and production of goods such as heavy machinery rather than consumer goods. The state followed an interventionist policy through “licensing” of industrial capacity as well as quantitative restrictions on imports to ensure that there is no excessive consumption by the upper or middle classes and enough resources were left for the production of capital goods essential for economic development. The employment of engineers and technical professionals in public sector undertakings did foster an army of middle class professionals in the initial period. However, while the model of severe protectionist policies with heavy import restrictions and strict limitations on private sector operations continued for over three decades, the public sector failed to display the dynamism for self-sustained growth, and productivity and hence competitiveness suffered. There was little growth in the manufacture of consumer goods, and the choice of such goods was very limited. In the 1960s and early 1970s, it was difficult to find a variety of quality refrigerators, toasters, and electric irons in the market. The “aspirers” – just above the poverty line – such as small shopkeepers, marginal farmers and semiskilled workers, did not have much to aspire to. In such a milieu, the Indian middle class could not compete with the growth of its counterparts in East Asian countries such as Korea or Taiwan. One can only speculate as to what may have happened in India had the private sector been allowed to expand and had the production of consumer goods not been discouraged so strongly. Perhaps it would have encouraged faster development of the Indian middle class. The 70s were a period of turmoil with a massive refugee problem and a war, multiple oil price shocks, and tense domestic politics with democratic rights suspended under the 17-month “internal emergency” declared on 26 June 1975. As a result, the size of the middle class in India, according to Bhalla, increased only from 1% of the total population to 2.5% of the population in 1985. It was only in the early to mid-1980s that India started to look at liberalization and a move away from intensive state regulation. Again, according to Bhalla, the middle class grew from 2.5% of the population in 1985 to 7% in 1995. The size of the Indian middle class increased after the mid-1980s and has continued to grow in the subsequent two decades. According to the NCAER data, while the Indian middle class grew at an annual rate of 14% between 1995–96 and 2010, the annual rate

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

103

of growth varied from 15.5% between 1995–96 and 2001–02 to 11.1% between 2001–02 and 2005–06, and 14.8% between 2005–06 and 2009– 10.

Underlying Reasons for Differing Speeds of Middle Class Formation The speed of middle class formation may vary for many reasons, including exogenous shocks such as high price of oil or global financial crisis. The conjecture of this paper is that apart from these exogenous shocks, a part of the cause for differing speeds of middle class formation lies in the policies the government pursued in the different periods. Policies of the government have been guided by three different but interrelated considerations.

Urge to remove poverty here and now First is the issue of support for the poor and among the poor, for the poorest of the poor. Poverty alleviation has been, rightly, one of the guiding principles of the Indian planning process right from the beginning. However, there are two alternative ways of attacking poverty – by laying the foundations of sustainable poverty eradication by providing better education and health facilities to the poor and better physical infrastructure such as rural roads to improve the poor’s income-earning potential, or by providing hand outs such as free or heavily subsidised food or old age pension for immediate succour. Until the Fourth Five Year Plan in the 1970s, the poverty programmes were mainly of the first variety with initiatives such as the Community Development Programme initiated in 1952, Green Revolution to increase the production and availability of food grains at affordable prices, and land reforms to get rid of the intermediaries. Then came the more targeted programmes to provide immediate income to the poor by employing them to construct village-level infrastructure such as roads or irrigation channels. Or, programmes for providing support to the poor through free or subsidised housing (such as under the Indira Awas Yojana from 1985– 86), or support to poor households in case of old age, death of primary bread-winner, or maternity (through the National Social Assistance Programme from 1995). The programmes proliferated, and while allocations were limited because of insufficiency of fiscal resources, practically every programme continued under the original name or some mutation thereof. For example,

104

Chapter Six

the Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) came in 1976 on a pilot basis for generating self-employment for the poor, and rapidly extended to large parts of the country (Planning Commission 2001).8 From 1960, starting with the Rural Manpower Programme (RMP), there have also been various schemes for rural wage employment such as Crash Scheme for Rural Employment and Drought Prone Area Programme around 1971, which culminated in Food for Work Programme in April 1977. These programmes were further refined and implemented as the National Rural Employment Programme from October 1980, and the National Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme from August 1983. These two in turn were consolidated and transformed into the Jawahar Rozgar Yojana from April 1989, and supplemented by the Employment Assurance Scheme from October 1993. These two in turn were transformed into the Jawahar Gram Samriddhi Yojana in 1999. The fundamental question is of the timing and scope of intervention. From the theory of social justice and the so-called Rawlsian max-min principle, there is an undeniable force in the argument that the focus should be on the poorest of the poor. But the issue is one of sustainability. Lifting a poor person above the poverty line requires an income transfer that is equal to the poverty gap (the difference between the poor person’s income and the poverty line). The total poverty gap in a developing country such as India may be too high to allow the government to maintain fiscal sustainability and macroeconomic balance and transfer the required amount to all the poor for removing poverty (OECD 2011: 57).9 Furthermore, the question needs to be asked whether this transfer will have to be made every year, or whether with the transfer some of the poor will become economically viable and remain above poverty without any government support in future years. Thus comes the choice between how much to allocate for the poor for immediate succour and how much to allocate for building the foundations for removing poverty on a sustained basis in the medium term. How does one make helping the slightly poor an ethically viable policy strategy compared to that of helping the poorest of the poor? How does one justify helping the needy versus helping the super-needy? There is a stark choice between (i) helping the “somewhat poor” so that they can escape the shackles of poverty and contribute to help those left behind in poverty in the medium term, and (ii) helping only the poorest of the poor year after year. Pragmatic policies pursued by East Asian countries demonstrate that what works and works fairly quickly in removing poverty in a few decades is helping the “somewhat poor” through improved physical infrastructure such as bijli, sadak, pani (power, roads, and water

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

105

supply) and social infrastructure such as education and health and some targeted interventions for roti, kapda, makan (food, clothing, and shelter) for the poorest of the poor. It is possible to argue that while providing some support to the poorest of the poor, it is better to focus on instruments such as education, health, and physical infrastructure which will allow the poor just below the poverty line to help themselves escape poverty and join the middle class. It appears that too much emphasis may have been put on roti, kapda, makan for the poor than on bijli, sadak, pani. Bijli, sadak, pani are public goods that everyone needs, and while sadak cannot be bought by the rich as a private good, it is possible to have private arrangements for the supply of the other two. After six decades of planning, bijli and pani are available in sufficient quantity only to the rich who can buy them at considerably higher private and social cost as private goods. Investing in the production of these public goods will strengthen the stability of the existing middle class households and help the poor at the margin of the poverty line to join the middle class. The middle class can save, invest, and provide entrepreneurship, but it cannot build power plants or transmission lines, roads or water supply systems on its own. It needs the government for that. The lack of emphasis on development of infrastructure in government policies has severely hampered the growth of the Indian middle class. The emphasis on trying to set up a wide-ranging welfare state – before meeting the basic provision of essential public goods – has been a bit premature in India. This has further impeded robust growth of India’s middle class. Middle class formation is facilitated by a virtuous cycle – as the class starts consuming new and modern goods (such as refrigerators and other consumer durables), the production of such goods leads to employment of more people in quality jobs and a swelling of the ranks of the middle class itself. The lack of emphasis on physical infrastructure in public sector policies has prevented the virtuous cycle of middle class formation from taking effect. With inadequate roads, insufficient power supply and other industrial infrastructure, when the Indian middle class consumed modern goods, production capacity expanded not in India but in countries which could supply these goods at competitive prices.

Obsession with inequality Growth helps in poverty reduction unless the distribution of income deteriorates dramatically and all the benefits of growth and other factors accrue to the rich. Growth with less inequality or what is called “inclusive growth” is more effective in reducing poverty and is superior to growth

106

Chapter Six

with increasing inequality. But, higher growth with mildly increasing inequality may be conducive to reducing poverty than lower but more equitable growth. It is a fact that inequality of income has increased in India, but there is nothing to suggest that it has deteriorated so much as to result in growth without poverty reduction. Yet, much public discourse in India has turned on “deteriorating income distribution” rather than “how to promote growth” or “how to reduce poverty”. Public discourse is increasingly focused on the income share of the top 10% versus the income share of the bottom 10%.10 While I commiserate with the growing gap between the top and bottom deciles, I want to suggest that our attention is better focused on the intervening 80%. The fortunes of this bulk of the population, which include those of the middle class, are, I want to argue, a better barometer of whether the growth trends will provide benefits for all. The earlier tolerance for income inequality “provided it was not excessive and could be seen to result in a higher rate of growth than would be possible otherwise” (Chakravarty 1987: 10) has disappeared. Among the 79 countries for which data on the Gini index of inequality for any year after 2008 is available on the World Bank website, only 21 had less income inequality than India (World Bank 2013).11 Of these 21, as many as 5 were former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and 7 were from former Soviet Union. Furthermore, in Asia, except for the Republic of Korea, all countries in a comparable group – Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – had higher income inequality than India in the recent period. While it is true that inequality as measured by the Gini index has risen in India from 30.8 in 1994 to 33.9 in 2010, it is interesting to note that the corresponding increase in the People’s Republic of China has been from 35.5 in 1993 to 42.1 in 2009. As Arthur Lewis (1983) has cogently argued, “Development must be inegalitarian because it does not start in every part of the economy at the same time. Somebody develops a mine and employs a thousand people; farmers in one province start planting cocoa which grows in only 10% of the country; or the Green Revolution arrives to benefit those farmers who have plenty of rain or access to irrigation while offering nothing to the other 50% in the drier regions.” Indeed, Korea and Taiwan have managed to grow fast without rising inequality even during their phase of fast growth, but they are exceptions rather than the rule. There may be merit in focusing on inequality in the medium to long term rather than fixating on short-term discrepancies.

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

107

Inequality has increased in India, and the blame for the increase has been squarely put on the shoulders of neo-liberal policies pursued from 1991 (Tedhunter 2013). No economic policy, however, could have assuaged the disastrous effects of our educational inequalities, inequalities which render it impossible for most citizens to participate in the economy, regardless of how that economy is structured. The slow spread of education and the slow growth of the manufacturing sector may be the two most important reasons for growth to be less inclusive than it could have been. As the experience of Korea demonstrates, rapid improvements in education and fast growth reinforce each other and lead to inclusive growth. In Korea, the successful expansion of education with the number of elementary school students expanding “from 2–3 million in 1950 to 5–6 million in the 1970s . . . with their enrolment rate exceeding 90 per cent in 1970” was a key ingredient of inclusive growth (Koh et al 2010). Government policies along with cultural traditions contributed to this outcome. The Basic Education Act was promulgated in 1949, and after the Korean War a six year programme of compulsory primary education was successfully implemented with advancement rate to primary education rising to 96% by 1959. Illiteracy fell dramatically from 78.2% in 1948 to 4.1% in 1958. The Korean government was active in promoting middle school, high school, tertiary, and vocational education through the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond. For example, the Private School Act was passed in 1963, high school equalization policy introduced in 1973, and private tutoring outlawed in 1980. Compared to Korea, the progress of education has been slow in India, with an adult literacy rate of 62.8% in 2006 compared to 95.9% in Korea in 1958. Perhaps it reflects the two governments’ priorities – in India, public spending on education as a proportion of government expenditure was 10.5% in 2010 compared to 15.8% in Korea in 2009. The pre-emption of fiscal resources by subsidies on food, fuel, fertilizer, and interest payments in India leaves little for other purposes. The inadequate education of many in India results in only a limited few being able to take advantage of the opportunities unleashed by the reform process. In India, along with the widening gap between the top and bottom deciles of wage-earners, as already mentioned, inequality of income distribution as measured by the Gini index has also gone up from 30.8 in 1994 to 33.5 in 2005 and further to 33.9 in 2010. Evidence suggests that after remaining fairly stable during 1983–93, inequality increased in the subsequent period. The underlying reasons behind growing inequality are interesting. As pointed out by Cain et al. (2010: 283): “[I]ncreases in

108

Chapter Six

“returns to education” account for a fairly large part of the increases in urban inequality . . . the increases in returns to education have been particularly pronounced in education intensive services (such as communications, finance, insurance, real estate, and other business services) and education intensive occupations (professional/technical, managerial/administrative and clerical occupations).” Furthermore, with progress in science and technology, while higher returns to education may continue to exacerbate the wage gap between skill-intensive and unskilled or semi-skilled occupations, persistent failure to industrialize aggressively will result in low employment of unskilled and semi-skilled workers and higher income inequality. The slow growth in manufacturing so far continues to reflect the failure to provide adequate infrastructure such as bijli, sadak and pani (electricity, roads, and water). The preoccupation with rising inequality, an overriding concern about whether growth is “inclusive” enough or not, and a misdiagnosis of why growth is not inclusive enough may have distracted policy-makers’ focus from growth itself and stultified the growth of the Indian middle class.

Inadequate voice Has the Indian middle class tried enough to influence the course of economic policies in India? If voter turnout in elections is taken as a proxy for political activism and assuming that there are more middle class members in urban areas than rural, then the lower voter turnout in urban areas can be taken as an indication of middle class apathy to exerting their influence on the course of economic policies (Heath 1999).12 As Hirschman (1970) describes, in response to unsatisfactory situations, there are two options for participants in a firm, organization, or country: exit (that is, leaving without trying to fix things), or voice (that is, trying to remedy the defects). The exit of a part of the middle class in India was manifested in two primary ways – brain drain and a quiet, reluctant acceptance of the status quo (Deb 2013).13 An estimated 1.4 million Indians emigrated to select European countries, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand between 1995 and 2005 (Naujoks 2009). The story of Indian software professionals in Silicon Valley is too well known to repeat. In recent times, there has also been a tendency for Indian enterprises to invest abroad. The reluctant acceptance of the status quo was manifested in a near-total absence – with the sole exception of trade-union movements by blue- and white-collared workers – of any articulation of demands for appropriate policies to help the middle class. A silent

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

109

acceptance of heredity as a major advantage in the political profession may also be a sign of this acquiescence.14 With this binary choice between “flight” and “fight”, after acquiescing for decades in “flight”, there may be indications that the Indian middle class is ready to fight the system and influence policies. The acceptance of the state-centric economic policies from the 1950s to the 1980s may have had a lot to do with the prevailing dominant political philosophy of the day. The former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China were very much in hot pursuit of the alternative model of economic development. But, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and disappearance of communism from all over Europe and ushering in of reforms under Deng Xiao Ping in China, the ideological underpinnings, as well as popular appeal for socialist policies, have been severely eroded. The reforms of the 1990s ending the license-permit raj and the severe import protectionism may have contributed to a slow build-up of activism among the middle class in India. The anti-corruption protests by Anna Hazare, the outrage about the Delhi gang-rape case and some support for new political formations such as the Aam Aadmi Party have been taken as signs of middle-class activism. It is too early to say how such activism will evolve, and what impact it will have on the electoral fortunes of established political parties. But it is unlikely that the interests of the middle class will continue to be so severely unrepresented in Indian policy-making as in the past.

Conclusion Sustainable growth and improvement for all requires focusing on the somewhat poor as well and not just the poorest only. In the Indian policy debate, the middle class who represent the “somewhat poor” has attracted too little attention. Policy discussion has focused a lot on inequality and less on growth. Sustainable solutions to inequality of outcomes are best addressed through public goods: education, health, and physical infrastructure. Meaningful understandings of existing inequality need to look at the middle 80% of income distribution and not just the top and bottom 10%. There needs to be a focus on the longer term as well. It is important to remember that the middle class is the basis of a strong and functional democracy. This thesis is not only central to liberal theory, but is also anecdotally obvious: the rich will manipulate the system while the poor will be exploited by it. For India to develop at a fast pace and in an inclusive way, what is needed is a big bulge in the middle of the income distribution.

110

Chapter Six

Indian economic policies have an unquestionable moral obligation to help the poor. But what life do we imagine for our fellow citizens when they are no longer poor? Have we established the frameworks that would enable them to move from poverty to sustainable, reasonably comfortable, personal and professional lives – the kinds of lives we would describe as “middle class”? The meaningful transformation of India’s economic woes must focus serious attention on the problems of the middle class. By middle class, I mean not an aspirational globally consuming set, but a group of citizens with enough financial security to engage meaningfully in public life: to create and develop productive economic enterprises; to intervene and shape democratic discourse; and to expand and invest in areas of culture, education, and the arts. Indian economic policy has, in the past, focused almost entirely on the problems of the poor, but the end of poverty lies in the production of the middle class – a middle class that would include many of those who are currently among the poor. This focus on policy impacts on the middle class offers a strategy that takes us away from an economy split between the poor and the rich, and from a charitable notion of economic redistribution to the possibility of rightsbased claims for economic justice.

Notes 1

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the National Seminar on “Tracking the Growth of the Indian Middle Class” at the Centre for Culture and Development, Vadodara during 27–29 November 2013. The author is grateful to Rana Hasan for comments. 2 There are 22 developing countries in Asia according to the ADB. Table 1 includes all except Uzbekistan. 3 Reported in EY: “The middle class effect and hitting the sweet spot of growth”, available at http://www.ey.com/GL/en/Issues/Driving-growth/Middle-classgrowth-in-emerging-markets---The-middle-class-effect-and-the-growth-sweet-spot 4 A discussion of the reasons for this growth deceleration is beyond the scope of this paper. 5 “Seekers range from young college graduates to mid-level government officials, traders and business people. They enjoy a lifestyle that most of the world would recognize as middle class and typically own a television, a refrigerator, a mobile phone and perhaps even a scooter or a car. Although their budgets are stretched, they scrimp and save for their children's education and their own retirement. Strivers, the upper end of the middle class, tend to be senior government officials, managers of large businesses, professionals and rich farmers. Successful and upwardly mobile, they are highly brand-conscious, buying the latest foreign-made cars and electronic gadgets. They are likely to have air conditioning, and can

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

111

indulge in an annual vacation, usually somewhere in India.” See Mckinsey Global Institute (2007). 6 At 2012–13 prices, these figures would translate to annual income between Rs 4.34 lakh and Rs 4.54 lakh, or between Rs 21.75 lakh and Rs 23.03 lakh depending on whether the consumer price index for agricultural labourers or industrial workers is chosen. At 2001–02 prices, the “deprived” on the bottom rung had an annual income of less than Rs 90,000, the aspirers between “deprived” and “middle class” between Rs 90,000 and Rs 2 lakh, and the rich at the top with annual income above Rs 10 lakh. See NCAER (2005). Beinhocker et al. (2007) have the same definition. 7 These surveys were conducted in 1972–73 (27th Round), 1977–78 (32nd Round), 1983 (38th Round), 1987–88 (43rd Round), 1993–94 (50th Round), 1999–2000 (55th Round), 2004–05 (61st Round), 2009–10 (66th Round), 2011–12 (68th Round). 8 IRDP was supported by allied sup-programmes such as Training for Rural Youth for Self-employment (TRYSEM), Development of Women & Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA), and Supply of Improved Tool-kits to Rural Artisans (SITRA). IRDP was revamped as the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) from 1 April 1999. See Planning Commission (2001). 9 According to the World Bank, the poverty gap index was at 7.49% in India in 2010, implying the need for PPP $34.2 on average per poor per year to bring all the poor above the PPP $1.25 poverty line. With 32.7% of the people below the poverty line, the total transfer required would have been PPP $13.8 billion. 10 For example, OECD (2011) p. 57, commented that the earnings of the top decile in by the late 2000s was 12 times more than the bottom 10%, compared to six times 20 years ago. http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49170475.pdf. 11 World Bank (2013). Available at http://databank.worldbank.org/data/views/reports/tableview.aspx?isshared=true&is popular=series&pid=8 These 21 countries are: Afghanistan, Armenia, Bangladesh, Belarus, Egypt, Ethiopia, Croatia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Moldova, Montenegro, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Tajikistan and Ukraine. 12 “The biggest differential is found between urban and rural respondents, where the turnout for town and city dwellers is 4.7 percentage points lower than the average, and 7.2 percentage points lower than in the case of rural voters. The same conclusion emerges from an analysis of turnout by the urban or rural nature of constituencies. Since the mid-1980s, the rural constituencies have overtaken the urban ones in the matter of turnout. The gap increased this year from about 6 percentage points to 9 percentage points, as the urban centres recorded a turnout of 51.6 per cent compared to 60.6 per cent for the entirely rural constituencies.” See Heath (1999). Available at http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1622/16221250.htm 13 Deb (2013) described this exit as “mental exile”. 14 In the current Parliament: All MPs whose age is less than 30 years are hereditary, more than two-thirds of MPs aged under 40 are hereditary, and 27 MPs

112

Chapter Six

are “hyperhereditary”, with several family members who have made a career out of politics. See http://www.theindiasite.com/family-politics/

References Adelman, I. and C. T. Morris. 1967. “Society, Politics and Economic Development: A Quantitative Approach”, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. ASER. 2013. “Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) (Rural), 2012” (January), New Delhi: ASER Centre. Asian Development Bank. 2010. “The Rise of the Asian Middle Class”, Special Chapter in “Key Indicators of the Asia and the Pacific: 2010”, Asian Development Bank, Manila, 2010, also available at http://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/KI/2010/KI2010-SpecialChapter.pdf retrieved on 13 October 2013. Banerjee, Abhijit and Esther Duflo. 2008. “What is Middle Class about the Middle Classes Around the World?”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 3–28. Beinhocker, Eric D., Diana Farrell and Adil S. Zainulbhai. 2007. “Tracking the Growth of Indian Middle Class”, The Mckinsey Quarterly, No. 3. Available at http://www.genesis.iitm.ac.in/downloads/resources/startup/tracking%2 0the%20growth%20of%20indian%20middle%20class.pdf retrieved on 15 October 2013. Birdsall, Nancy, Carol Graham and Stefano Pettinato. 2000. “Stuck in the Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling the Middle Class?”, Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Working Paper 14, Washington DC: Brookings Institution. Cain, J. Salcedo, Rana Hasan, Rhoda Magsombol, and Ajay Tandon. 2010. “Accounting for Inequality in India: Evidence from Household Expenditures”, World Development, Vol. 38, No. 3 (March), pp. 282– 297. Chakravarty, S. 1987. Development Planning: The Indian Experience, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chun, Natalie, Rana Hasan and Mehemet Ulubulsgo. 2010. “The Middle Class and Development: Do Cross-country Data Show?” Paper presented during the workshop on Asia’s Middle Class held in ADB Head Quarters, Manila, Philippines on 27-28 May. Deb, Sandipan. 2013. “The Exit of the Middle Class”, Mint (12 July). Also available at

India: The Middle Class and Economic Reforms

113

http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/vslJbi0RTC3Z2WNnlddaLL/TheExit-of-the-Middle-Class.html Easterly, William and Ross Levine. 2001. “What have we Learned from a Decade of Empirical Research on Growth? It’s Not Factor Accumulation: Stylized Facts and Growth Models”, World Bank Economic Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (August), pp. 177–219. Harris, John. 2007. “The Onward March of the New ‘Great Indian Middle Class”, The Hindu (15 August). Available at http://www.hindu.com/af/india60/stories/2007081550681800.htm retrieved on 13 October 2013. Heath, Oliver. 1999. “The Turnout Factor”, Frontline, Vol. 16, Issue 22 (23 October 23–5 November). Available at http://www.frontline.in/static/html/fl1622/16221250.htm retrieved on 18 October 2013. Hirschman, Albert, O. 1970. Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States”, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Koh, Youngsun, Seung Kwon Kim, Chang Whan Lee, Young Lee, Joo Seop Kim, Sang Young Lee, and Young-Ock Kim. 2010. “Social Policy”, in II Sakong Youngsun Koh (ed.), The Korean Economy: Six Decades of Growth and Development, Korean Development Institute, Seoul. Also available at http://210.114.108.22/pub/docu/en/AH/AA/AHAA2010AAB/AHAA2010-AAB.PDF retrieved on 15 October 2013. Landes, David S. 1998. Wealth and Poverty of Nations, New York: W.W. Norton. Lewis, W.A. 1983. “Development and Distribution”, in M. Gersovitz (ed.), Selected Economic Writings of W. Arthur Lewis, New York: New York University Press, pp. 443–459. McKinsey Global Institute. 2007. “Next Big Spenders: The Indian Middle Class”, Newsweek (19 May), available at http://www.mckinsey.com/Insights/MGI/In_the_news/Next_big_spend ers_Indian_middle_class retrieved on 18 October 2013. Meyer, Christian, and Nancy Birdsall. 2012. “New Estimates of Indian Middle Class: A Technical Note”, Centre for Global Development, November 2012, also available at http://www.cgdev.org/doc/2013_MiddleClassIndia_TechnicalNote_C GDNote.pdf retrieved on 20 October 2013. National Council of Applied Economic Research. 2005. “The Great Indian Market” (9 August). Available at

114

Chapter Six

http://www.ncaer.org/downloads/PPT/thegreatindianmarket.pdf retrieved on 13 October 2013. Naujoks, Daniel. 2009. Emigration, Immigration, and Diaspora Relations in India. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Available at http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=745#3 retrieved on 15 October 2013. OECD. 2011. “Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps Rising”, OECD, 2011, available at http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49170475.pdf retrieved on 15 October 2013. Parker, John. 2009. “Burgeoning Bourgeoisie”, The Economist (14 February), also available at http://www.economist.com/node/13063298 retrieved on 13 October 2013. Planning Commission. 2001. “Report on the Working Group on Rural Poverty Alleviation Programmes for the Tenth Five Year Plan”, New Delhi: Planning Commission. Available at http://planningcommission.nic.in/aboutus/committee/wrkgrp/wg_rulpovty. pdf retrieved on 18 October 2013. Ravallion, Martin. 2009. “The Developing Countries’ Bulging (Vulnerable) Middle Class”, Policy Research Working Paper 4816, Development Research Group, World Bank, January. Available at http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context= martin_ravallion retrieved on13 October 2013. Tedhunter, Colin. 2013. “Mass Poverty and Social Inequality in India: The Devastating Impacts of the Neoliberal Economic Development Model”, Global Research, October 30. Also available at http://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-poverty-and-socialinequality-in-india-the-devastating-impacts-of-the-neoliberaleconomic-development-model/5356153. World Bank. 2013. World Development Indicators, Washington DC: World Bank.

CHAPTER SEVEN THE INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS AND ITS POLITICS NAGESH PRABHU

Introduction Contemporary politics in India offers an interesting case for study of economic and political transitions and the rise of the middle class. Apparently, the rise of a new middle class is one of the outstanding features of the economic, social, and political developments in India in the 1990s. Liberal economic policies have triggered an extensive discussion on the political power of the emerging middle class in India in recent years. The discussion itself has been fuelled by reasons more to do with economic policy, polity, and social structure than scholarly analysis about the process and the role. The larger the constituency of the middle class the more will be the number of consumers and the size of the market would depend on them. Therefore, there has been speculation about the construction of the size of this constituency to attract capital into the market as well as to direct it to different sectors depending upon the projected fancies of this class. Indian discussion on the middle class is not merely restricted to the middle class as consumers but often extends beyond that. Over the years, a lively discourse has been constructed on the rise of this class in India and even about problem of locating them in terms of the class relations. However, those who have discussed it as a social category in modern India do not necessarily agree with the concern of those who want to assess its class consciousness, whether it is radical or conservative. This also connects to the political economy. The process of the formation of the middle class in India and the different social fragments that were co-opted into it are specific to the history and developments in modern India following the colonial impact. One needs to note here that the middle class in India is an offspring of the establishment of the British educational and legal system, and later as the consequence of the development of modern

116

Chapter Seven

trade and industry. Certainly the Indian middle class has its own story to tell although certain elements of this category are common the world over as far as the making of this class is concerned. But in the context of the personality changes of the Indian state the group has extensively differentiated importance. Most scholars agree that the emergence of a new middle class in India and other developing countries was the inevitable result of liberalization, globalization, and privatization policies. In India, the new middle class is seen as a departure in many ways from the old middle class of the preglobalized era. In the context of economic reforms, the middle class has been re-invented as the “new middle class” due to discursive production of its new cultural image that rests on the socio-symbolic practices of consumption and new aspirations of education, employment, and leisure. Along with commodity consumption, the urban middle class has also been studied as the recipient of material benefits of jobs in the new economy. This class has provided a broader base for capitalism and cultural universe for global capital to operate and flourish in India (Jodhka and Prakash 2011). The middle class in the contemporary period is negotiating India’s new relationship with the global economy in both cultural (socio-symbolic practices of commodity consumption) and economic terms (the beneficiaries of the material benefits of jobs and business in India’s new liberalized economy) (Fernandes 2000). Determining the size of the middle class is as contentious as fixing a poverty line; the actual nature and size of the Indian middle class vary greatly depending on the method of calculation – income, employment status, and education. There has been very little systematic research on the size and composition of the Indian middle class. No one denies the fact that it has been growing in both size and influence over the years and that their absolute number is quite significant. For instance, the Brooking Institution estimated India’s middle class to be 5% of the population (as compared to 12% for China) using a per capita income per day threshold income of $10 in 2010. The National Council of Applied Economic Research in the year 2007–08 said India had 126 million households (not persons) in the middle-income category who earn anything between $3,830 and $22,970 annually (Shukla and Purushothaman 2008). The Asian Development Bank estimated that, in the year 2005, India had 214 million, 43.5 million and 4.7 million persons with a per-day consumption expenditure of two to four US dollars, four to 10 US dollars and 10 to 20 US dollars, respectively (ADB, 2010). Kannan and Raveendran (2011) put the number of middle income Indians at around 19% of the total population. With higher growth in the last few years, Kharas (2010) points

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

117

out that India could witness a dramatic expansion of its middle class, from 5 to 10% of its population to 90% in 2030. The McKinsey Global Institute in its 2007 report suggested that India’s middle class would rise from 50 million to 583 million by 2025. By all reasonable estimates, the strength of the middle class in India is that it is bigger in size than the entire population of many nations. Just as there are several estimates of the size of the Indian middle class, the literature too abounds with various versions of the class character of the middle class, particularly the new middle class. While Pranab Bardhan (1994) located the middle class as the part of the dominant coalition governing in India, Satish Deshpande (2003) defined it as a class building hegemony of the present socio-economic and political arrangements, Barbara Harriss-White (2003) termed it a powerful intermediary class regulating India’s market economy and controlling and moulding the state in its interests to varying degrees and Atul Kohli (1989) identified it as one of the influential constituency supporting liberalization. The global debate on the theme has generated a large number of conflicting constructs, viz., “a petty bourgeoisie” (Marx and Engels, 1967), “proletarianization class” (Braverman 1974; Westergaard and Resler 1975; Carchedi 1977), “fragmented class” (Roberts et al. 1977), “contradictor class location” (Wright 1978); “structurally ambiguous class” (Abercrombie and Urry 1983), “new petty-bourgeoisie” (Poulantzas 1975), “service class” (Dahrendorf 1959). It has been also described as “surplus class”, “new classes”, and “professional-managerial classes”. Therefore, the concept of the middle class, whatever it is, is imprecise. Therefore, we must acknowledge the fact that the middle class is not a homogenous group but is fragmented by social location and ideology on the one hand and income and occupation on the other. This paper primarily focuses on the Indian middle class and its politics. Studying different theories of this class is beyond the scope of this research paper. The paper aims at capturing the complexities of middle-class politics in contemporary India. I focus here on the impact this class has had on Indian politics and conversely the impact that state policy has had on the making of the middle class. This paper also focuses on the rise of the new middle class and examines the relationship between the new middle class and the state. I argue that the state continues to play a vital role in shaping the policies of the new middle class. The middle class has increasingly supported economic liberalization while the poor have acquired a much stronger voice in the electoral democracy. I explore factors that led to a shift in the political leanings of the middle class, particularly the upper caste middle class, towards the BJP since the 1990s. The paper examines

118

Chapter Seven

the role of the middle class in terms of caste, and the emerging partypolitical leanings of the middle class in the post-1991 reform period, as these factors have an important bearing on the relationship of the middle class to economic reforms.

Expansion Period The expansion of the state’s activities during the Jawaharlal Nehru period has seen a tremendous growth in the middle class. In the postindependence period, the Indian state intervened in a significant way in the services and welfare sectors. This created the crucial need for advancement in the fields of science and technology, agricultural knowhow, medicine, administration and management, and education in general. Posts and telegraph, print, radio and television networks, railways, and transport systems expanded which led to an increase of white collar workers. As a corollary to this role, there occurred an increase in insurance firms, banking, hotels, travelling and tourist agencies, etc., which gave further impetus to the growth of white collar workers carrying out administrative and organizational functions. The demand for trained and skilled personnel called for numerous engineering, medical, and managerial institutions, universities, colleges, and schools. All these institutions gave a further boost to the growth of the professional classes of white collar category. The functions of the state became complex as well and expanded in a big way. Secretariats expanded, new departments were opened, and courts found increased activities. Many other supervisory, regulatory, and controlling functions of the government made further additions to white collar workers. This new middle class which is serving the nation in all fields can be regarded as the backbone of the social and economic structure of the country. Thus the requirement arose for many personnel trained in different fields to carry out complex tasks. The demand for employment and training of executives, administrators, managers, assistants, and clerks and for engineers, doctors, lawyers, various technicians, and skilled personnel increased sizeably. During the 15-year period 1956–70 which was marked by the launch of the second Industrial Policy and Green Revolution, the public sector (central, state, local, and quasi-government bodies) provided employment to nearly 5.1 million people while the organized private sector absorbed 1.7 million people (Jodhka and Prakash 2011). After Independence, the middle class manned the institutional apparatus of the state, its economic organs, and the party formation; it has

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

119

formulated the voice of the interest groups and pressure groups and has supplied personnel to agencies sustaining public opinion in India. The middle class has been instrumental in drawing up the ideological map of India and has been guarding its cultural and intellectual life. The early decades of economic policy were focused on state intervention: government investment in the development of large-scale industrial units rather than production of consumer-oriented commodities. Such policies were connected to the process of a modernizing India in which industrial development was linked to a political culture constituted by a discourse on the need for the advancement of the poor. From the political speeches of Jawaharlal Nehru to popular films such as Mother India and Do Bigha Zameen (Gadgil 1998), they were all shaped by linkages between the ideology of development, a decrease of poverty and the nation-state and representative democracy (Fernandes 2000). Universal suffrage, the increase in literacy, and the growth of markets and communications created the objective conditions for the intervention and reinvention of an all-encompassing national identity (Hasan 2002). The legacy of the anticolonial movement served as the ideological cement of society and development. This agenda had the support of the professional middle classes (Hasan 2002). The relative power of the state in India owing to its pre-eminence in the economy has enormously increased the power and prestige of the class. On account of the scarcity of any employment that many of the middle class deem fit for themselves, there has been extensive and intensive competition for jobs which has led to the networking of kith and kin relationships, on the one hand, and corruption on the other. Its tendency to use a broad spectrum of identities has often led to the harbouring of communal tendencies. Different segments of the middle class at various times and in different contexts have become proponents of a diverse set of issues such as regionalism, language, reservation, casteism, and ethnicity. Its political tendencies can run across an entire spectrum, making any deep ideological attachment to any position highly suspect. In the early decades of the post-independence period, the nature of the middle class was that of a salaried and professional class, without any direct involvement in trade, commerce, and industry. The middle class were identified as “Nehruvian civil service-oriented salariat, short on money but long on institutional perks”. The middle classes had endorsed some of Indira Gandhi’s actions even at a time when the JP Movement had considerable support. The middle class was enthusiastically supportive of a crackdown against smugglers and other economic offenders. One hundred and thirty-four leading

120

Chapter Seven

smugglers were arrested in a pre-dawn raid on 17 September 1974. Indira Gandhi knew quite well which of her actions would receive the immediate endorsement of her otherwise vocal critics from the middle class. On 18 May 1974, in the midst of the JP Movement and the railway strike, Indira Gandhi detonated an underground nuclear device at Pokharan in the sandy wastes of Rajasthan to become the sixth member of the exclusive Nuclear Club. The credit for this landmark event – labelled by the government as a peaceful nuclear experiment – was certainly due to Indira Gandhi and the dedicated group of scientists, also from the middle class, who worked to implement her vision. The overwhelming support for the decision to go nuclear had nothing do with a change in threat perception, but with a search for self-esteem and respect in a world where not enough respect was shown to India. Even though the middle classes supported some of the policies of the Congress government, different sections of the middle class supported the movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan, a socialist and Gandhian, against Indira Gandhi. It was proof, rather, of its ideological rudderlessness, where the only compass working was a perception of its own interest and expectations (Varma 2007). The “remove Indira” campaign reached its climax on 12 June 1975, when Justice Singh of the Allahabad High Court pronounced his judgment in an election petition against her. The historic judgment set aside her election to Parliament in 1971 and debarred her from elective office for six years. The electoral malpractices for which she was convicted were, according to some, of both a minor and a technical nature. But the judgment greatly weakened her moral right to continue in office and was welcomed with great delight by her opponents. Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on 25 June 1975 and abrogated democracy. The scope for dissent was eliminated. Censorship was imposed across the country. Despite widespread condemnation of the imposition of the state of emergency by Indira Gandhi, one fact is conclusive proof of the quiescence of the middle class which is that hardly any officials resigned in protest against the emergency. Back in the days of British rule, Mahatma Gandhi’s call to “non-cooperate” with the rulers led to thousands of resignations of teachers, lawyers, judges, even Indian Civil Service officers. Now, the abrogation of democracy was protested by only a handful of people in state employment. These included Fali Nariman, who resigned as additional solicitor general, M.L. Dantwal, who declined to continue as an adviser to the Reserve Bank of India, and Bagaram Tulpule, who left his high position in a public-sector undertaking (Guha 2007). Civil servants and government employees refused to resign because public

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

121

employment in India means total job security and politically determined, not market determined, pay scales. Public employees have an interest in the size and scope of the state and regularly increased public sector wages. A government job provides both economic security and social prestige.

Passionate with Rajiv Gandhi Era After Indira Gandhi’s death, Rajiv Gandhi led the Congress Party to its biggest electoral victory since Independence. The middle classes were more passionate with politics during the Rajiv Gandhi era (1984–98). Rajiv Gandhi was 40 years of age when he became the Prime Minister. For the middle class, he represented something new, something different from the predictability of the past. He was perceived to be free of the baggage of the old ideology, pragmatic, with an open mind, and capable of taking decisions without the mandatory reference to the past. If Nehru stood for ideology as a conditioning prerequisite for economic development, Rajiv Gandhi stood for technology as the pragmatic precondition for economic change (Varma 2007). Prior to Rajiv Gandhi becoming the Prime Minister, the middle classes generally tended to hold a cynical attitude to politics and politicians and maintain an inactive stance in democratic politics filled by the “public”. Politicians were seen as vulnerable to populist pressures and themselves not very knowledgeable. The middle classes did not consider politics as their profession of choice and thought of it as a distraction from their pursuit of careers. Palshikar (2002) argues that Rajiv Gandhi changed – at least momentarily – some of these images of politics and politicians. Rajiv Gandhi introduced new faces into politics, and many of them were professionals and experts. He accelerated the reform process towards liberalization of India’s trade regime and domestic production. The government lowered taxes for the middle classes so as to heighten the demand, especially for consumer durables, besides giving a boost to the software industry. Several reforms were initiated including elimination of licensing requirements and opening up of areas hitherto reserved for the public sector. The 1980s was also a decade in which the country’s economy made a breakthrough, moving beyond the “Hindu growth rate” to a rapidly growing economy. Thus, with many English-speaking politicians and technocrats inducted into the Cabinet, the language of development assumed a new meaning. Instead of “welfare”, development now meant technological development. The middle classes appreciated this new politics. The honeymoon was bound to be short-lived. Ordinary “dirty” politics resurfaced with the coming to power by the National Front (NF)

122

Chapter Seven

government headed by Prime Minister V.P. Singh. Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress was defeated in the 1989 elections. The corruption debates surrounding the Bofors deal created a wave of anti-Congress and shrill nationalistic note that swept the Congress out of power. V.P. Singh was riding to power on a tide of middle class support. His term in office lasted less than a year, but it would leave a lasting legacy because of his announcement of the implementation of the Mandal Commission report reserving 27% of central government jobs for backward castes. B.P. Mandal, who himself belonged to a backward caste, was appointed to head the commission in the year 1977, to identify backward castes and make recommendations for their advancement. He submitted a report in 1980, but neither Indira Gandhi nor Rajiv Gandhi took any steps to implement it. V.P. Singh, somewhat besieged by the infighting in the coalition government he headed, recognized that the middle class would not see him through his term because of the unstable nature of his government, so he suddenly changed gear. On 7 August 1990, he Singh announced that his government would implement the long-pending report of the Mandal Commission. The middle class regarded the V.P. Singh government’s decision to implement the quota in jobs for backward castes as a betrayal. Although the middle classes did derive substantial benefits from liberal economic policies ushered in by Manmohan Singh in the early 1990s, they did not support the Congress. The 1990s witnessed the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with considerable support from the middle classes. Among several reasons, the decision of the NF government led by V.P. Singh to implement the Mandal Commission Report pushed angry middle class voters towards the BJP. The instability and factionalism characteristic of the NF government also contributed to this pro-BJP trend among the middle classes.

Shift in political leanings The economic reforms of the 1990s created a new world of global possibilities, a climate of optimism and confidence, at least among a section of the new urban middle class. The middle class, particularly the upper caste middle class, was disgusted with the dominant Congress Party’s politics and Congress politicians which were in sharp contrast to the reverence enjoyed by the leaders of the freedom movement and early republic such as Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Govind Ballabh Pant, and B.R. Ambedkar, who were hero worshipped for their integrity. The major reason for the middle class disenchantment with

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

123

the politics can be traced to populist schemes adopted by the Congress government. Indira Gandhi discovered the power of populism and launched several measures such as raising taxes, nationalizing banks and industries and identifying with the poor electorate, reversing decades of Congress’s middle path strategy that embraced all sections of society. Her gamble to identify with the poor through implementation of garibi hatao (remove poverty) and land reform programme paid off electorally, but in the process it also resulted in the complete political dispensability of the smaller middle class. As India remained an economic laggard and corruption in government grew steadily in the 1970s and 1980s, the middle class became resigned to its marginalization in politics and became apathetic. What were the major factors that contributed to the shift in the loyalty of the middle class from the Congress to the BJP in the 1990s? The emergence of Sonia Gandhi as leader of the Congress and rise of BJP’s allies in various states contributed to the increased vote share of the middle classes for the BJP and its allies. Christophe Jaffrelot has argued that the BJP has won over their support by default: “The BJP attracted support by default because the Congress was deeply unpopular. Moreover, the BJP probably won over former Congress supporters all the more easily because it appeared to be the sole proponent of a political project – building a strong India – which had been established and assiduously promoted by Indira Gandhi” (Jaffrelot 1996: 433). The Congress was increasingly perceived by the urban middle class as a party that depended on the politics of vote banks, and that pandered excessively to Muslims and to the lower classes and castes. These urban middle classes were also threatened by an increasingly diversified political field with both smaller regional parties and autonomous political and social movements which provided a mechanism for Dalits and OBCs to achieve both political voice and electoral representation (Fernandes 2006). Sridharan (2004) argues that the electoral support for the BJP and its allied parties results from the combined effects of two factors: first, the change in India’s social structure from an elite/mass structure to one with a substantial middle class sandwiched between these two poles; and second, the political vacuum on the centre-right that has existed since the demise of the Swatantra Party in the 1970s. There was no right-of-centre party specifically articulating the interests of the emerging middle class. The rise of the new middle class has unfolded in the context of a broader political field that formed middle class politics in the late twentieth century. In the late 1980s, the BJP had been militantly championing the politics of Hindutva (Hindu Nationalism) by leading the

124

Chapter Seven

Ramjanmabhoomi agitation. One of the abiding myths created and sustained by the media is the huge dividends reaped by the BJP from the Hindutva card in general and the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation in particular. The urban middle classes increasingly began to turn to the BJP as a party that could represent a strong middle class-oriented nationalist party – one that could provide an alternative to the Congress party that the middle class viewed as corrupt and captured by subordinated groups. For instance in the 1980s the urban middle class grew alienated from Rajiv Gandhi’s regime as he became mired in corruption scandals and as he turned away from earlier promises of economic reforms in favour of more populist electoral strategies. The Shah Bano case gained much public attention as a defining event that helped the BJP gain public support and helped delegitimize Congress’ rule. The Congress’ role in using parliamentary means to overturn the Supreme Court ruling in this case enabled the BJP to portray the Congress as a party that pandered to conservative Muslim leaders effectively. Other factors such as the implementation of Mandal Commission Report, the destruction of the Babri Masjid (6 December 1992), and the nuclear tests have created a constituency among the middle class of politics of Hindutva. The Sangh Parivar is known to be widely associated with all three events (Hasan 2002). In the backdrop of agitation against the Mandal Commission Report, young people across the country who participated in the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation belonged to the lower middle classes from the upper castes. On the nuclear bomb issue, the media and most of the middle class people were rather proud and pleased with the new status acquired by India as a result of nuclear explosions in 1998. India was able to withstand fairly well the economic sanctions imposed by the US and its allies following the nuclear tests. India’s improved capabilities influenced India’s state behaviour in respect of the global system. They added to the self-confidence of the Indian elite to manage the economy in the world and to defy the world on matters touching its national security. It is simply unimaginable that India could have undertaken such measures in the mid-1960s when it was deeply dependent on the US for aid and food. In the background of above developments, in the 1990s there has been a distinct change in the political preference of the upper and middle classes as also the upper castes away from the Congress and towards the BJP and this has been evident with the increase in vote share of the BJP (Yadav, Kumar and Heath 1999). A remarkable feature of political Hinduism represented by the BJP is the ease with which it has filled the political vacuum created by Congress’ decline. Political Hinduism has taken shape in the political system and through sustained campaigns of the Sangh

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

125

Parivar since the mid-1980s. And yet, it also found more fertile ground and an expanded base of support as a result of changes in Indian society. These include the collapse of the Nehruvian consensus, the intensification of market relations, rapid acceleration of communications and travelling facilities, and further mobility and exposure to the world outside generally (Hasan 2002). But a section of the middle class still continues to support the Congress. Efforts by the BJP to attract voters from lower strata and minorities may not have gone well with the middle classes (Palshikar 2002). The rise of the BJP in terms of its vote share among the middle class has been spectacular during three successive general elections from 1996, and this has been documented by Yogendra Yadav, Sanjay Kumar and Oliver Heath (1999). They argued that the BJP “has created a new social block, a new coalition of different social groups, that now lay claim to political power . . . The new social block is shaped by the convergence of traditional caste-community differences and class distinctions . . . defined by the overlap of social and economic privileges”. Religion is not the principal basis in the creation of the new social block, which has brought the BJP to power at the centre. Rather the social block is created by the convergence of traditional caste and community differences and class distinctions (Yadav et al. 1999). This can be seen from the fact that the share of the BJP vote goes up as you move up in the social hierarchy from the lower castes to the upper castes where that of its allies in the coalition goes up as you move down the social ladder. In 1996, 30% of respondents from the upper middle class (UMC) supported the BJP. In 1998 too, 29% of respondents from the UMC supported the Congress and 33% supported the BJP (Heath and Yadav 1999). A CSDS survey conducted after India’s 1999 general elections revealed that the BJP received 60% of upper caste Hindu votes and 52% of the vote among dominant Hindu peasant castes such as Jats, Marathas, Patidars, Reddys, and Kammas. The BJP’s vote share declined in the lower caste hierarchy. The CSDS’s 2004 post-poll survey data revealed that, in cities that account for predominantly urban constituencies, the Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) parties won 43 per cent of votes of the very poor, while the BJP-led NDA parties won just 25 per cent. The BJP’s vote share also correlates positively with class status, its vote share falling linearly as one goes down the ladder of economic status and educational attainment. Therefore, we can safely argue that BJP and its allies have been emerging as the main preference of the middle class over a period of time and the BJP’s support base is limited among the poor.

126

Chapter Seven

The BJP’s base, though spreading to rural areas, remained mostly urban. The BJP’s electoral base is mostly composed of upper castes and dominant castes which also make up disproportionately large part of the upper income groups (Sridharan 2004). Radhika Desai (2002) says that in more prosperous states, there is an emerging top-middle convergence of interests that reflects in the common political preference among the traditional and upper castes and the rising dominant peasant castes, particularly in the west and south India. Desai argues that “the greater the economic fortunes of these middle castes, the more they tended to see the possibility of integration into Hindutva’s predominantly upper caste/class as it was inviting.” Jaffrelot (2013) says, “The neo-middle class is made of aspiring groups that tend to change their political colour after migrating to the urban milieu. The shift is particularly striking in the case of OBCs in Gujarat when the upwardly mobile OBCs end up in a city” (ibid). Caste identities and caste-related political cultures thus get submerged by class considerations when formerly rural groups come to the city, hoping to join the lower middle class. Their new ethos and aspirations make them turn to Narendra Modi’s BJP and its promise of jobs in the name of development. The surveys conducted before 2004 general election indicated that the youth (18–24 years of age) too rallied behind the BJP-led coalition and identified with classes, social groups and parties that seem to promise upward mobility (Outlook 2004). But views of white-collar workers and those of BJP supporters on economic reforms are very mixed, with significant sections disapproving of different aspects of the reforms (Kumar 2004). Some scholars argue that there is convergence between the politics of middle class support for Hindu nationalism and for economic reforms (Corbridge and Harriss 2000; Rajagopal 2001). Corbridge and Harriss argue that it is possible to “describe both economic liberalisation and Hindu nationalism with sometimes contradictory but often surprisingly complementary agendas for reinvention of India as ‘elite revolts’. Both reflect and are vehicles for the interests and aspirations especially of the middle class and higher caste Indians”. However, Fernandes (2006) argues that the politics of the liberalizing middle class is shaped both by continuities with late twentieth-century narratives defined by caste and religion and by new patterns of class politics.

Regional Variations Developments in the 1990s created an environment in which state governments assume large responsibilities to define their development policies and to attract private participation in their respective territories.

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

127

Weakening of the national parties has led to the multi-party coalition governments at the centre and in states, enabling smaller regional parties to participate in these coalitions and have a strong impact on national and state-level politics. The growth of regional parties is associated with a greater diversity of economic policies. Increased levels of state autonomy and weakening of the political authority of the central government in 1990s provided “political space” for states to plough their own course (Howes et al. 2003: 5). The coalition made up of regional parties can exercise a great deal of influence in policy-making at the centre (Bajpai and Sachs 1999: 1). The regional parties are also concerned with how they can use their influence in New Delhi to further the political interests of their parties at the state level. State governments receive bigger plan grants and loans if they are politically affiliated with the central government. Political considerations rather than equity and efficiency over time influence the distribution of intergovernmental transfers across the states (Khemani 2003: 26). With the increased responsibilities of states and weakening of national parties in the 1990s, electoral choices are made at the level of states rather than at the all-India level. Electoral competition is often determined by the nature of competition in a given state. The Congress was able to draw substantial support from the middle classes in some regions. Except in UP, Bihar, and West Bengal, around one-third of the respondents from the upper middle classes prefers the Congress. However, in many states, regional parties have emerged as the main choice of the middle class. In states having two-party system, that is BJP and the Congress, the BJP secured 45, 50 and 50% of the middle classes’ support in 1996, 1998 and 1999 elections, while the Congress bagged 45, 43 and 34% of the support of the same class in the same three successive elections. In Left-dominated states, the Left Front, the Congress, and the BJP and its allies have respectively received 38, 19 and 30% of the votes from the middle classes in 1999 elections. In states dominated by regional parties, the Congress secured 32% and the BJP 10% and regional parties bagged 55% of votes from the middle classes (Heath and Yadav 1999). The middle classes supported regional parties in states where the BJP is in a weak position. Strong support for the Left Front in Kerala and West Bengal suggest that the middle classes locate themselves as supporters for winning formation at the local level. With the middle classes beginning to shift to BJP the electoral competition becomes severe in states. The overwhelming support to BJP from the middle classes comes from Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. Middle classes supported BJP allies such as Akalis in Punjab, Janata Dal (U) in Bihar, and Shiv

128

Chapter Seven

Sena in Maharashtra. In all these states, the BJP is in a weak position compared to its allies. Voting trends in the last five general elections have shown that India’s elections are least national in character compared with most countries in the world. After all, even in 2009, the combined vote share of the Congress and the BJP, at 47.5%, had declined by 1.2%. The Congress and the BJP together had nearly 57% vote share in 1991. There has been nearly 10% decline in the vote share of the two national parties over the past 20 years. This is how much the polity has got regionalized over this period. In terms of geographical spread, even the BJP can be described as a party mainly confined to northern India and the western region. In the 2009 elections, the Congress improved its overall vote share from 26.5% to 28.6%, and the BJP declined from 22.2% to 18.8%. The BJP’s vote share in just the seats contested declined dramatically by 11% (Modi 2013). In states where the two national parties have a direct contest, the Congress lost and the BJP gained. Both national parties were involved in the direct contest in the 2013 elections held for the State Legislative Assemblies of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, and Chhattisgarh. The Congress lost in four states, and the BJP won a majority of seats in three states except Delhi where no party secured a majority. In the multicornered contest scenario, in most states regional parties secured the upper hand against two regional parties. Thus, the middle classes appear to have adopted a two-pronged approach. They have a decided preference for the BJP. At the same time, they strive to locate themselves as supporters of the winning combination at the state level. Wherever possible, this state-level choice is a regional ally of the BJP. This approach ensures ascendancy of the BJP as an instrument of the middle class as well access to control over public resources. As a result, even when a non-BJP formation comes to power at the state level, it follows the politics acceptable to middle classes to the extent that it is dependent upon middle classes (Palshikar 2002). The BJP came to power in 1998 and held on to it till 2004 at the centre. “India Shining”, a slogan the BJP had selected in 2004, reinforced traditionally held notions and hopes of India’s middle strata which had emerged as a result of state-led industrialization efforts but which did not find appropriate jobs in an ultimately too slowly growing modern sector. The verdict of 2004 general elections reminded us that the market cannot be the measure of everything in the democracy. The Hindu right and the middle class domination of it are challenged by a coalition of popular movements which are opposed to the militant Hindutva project. The liberalization agenda has come into conflict with the demands of the agricultural classes. The 2004 poll outcome demonstrated that there was a

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

129

widespread unease and anxiety among the common people, particularly the poor, regarding their economic conditions and livelihood. This anxiety and lack of trust in a government that was perceived to be pro-rich seem to have been an influential element in the election outcome. In recent years, it has seemed that the middle class was more and more concerned about corruption and the criminalization of politics – evident from the Anna Hazare movement which, arguably, was driven by the middle class. Lack of transparency in political funding, corruption in holding the Commonwealth Games, the 2-G scam, land de-notifications, and illegal mining strengthened the voice of the middle class and the anticorruption campaigns drew a huge response in the national capital and other cities. The Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) success in the 2013 election in the Legislative Assembly of Delhi indicated that the middle class families are frustrated with the rampant corruption and politics of criminality. Many scholars argued that the AAP is a product of the new political empowerment of the middle class though it had received support from slum dwellers and working classes. The party won 28 seats in its debut and redefined the mode of the election campaign.

The Middle Class and Neo-liberalism Policies of economic liberalization since the early 1990s have contributed to the enormous growth of the new middle class in India. The rising middle class, wrote an observer, had “become the most visible sign of rapidly progressing economy”. In the nineties and onwards the middle class was found to have a high preference for free markets and support for private industry and competition. There has been a relative decline of the support for state-owned enterprises and the government as the owner of the business, and a primacy of growth policies, which suggests that the middle class may be optimistic about its own potential and sceptical of the role of the state. The growth in information technology, telecommunications, real estate, and education in the private sector reconfirmed this optimism in the post-reform period. Thus, it is widely argued that the middle class formed the backbone of both the market economy and of democracy (Birdsall et. al. 2000), induced economic growth (Easterly 2001), entrepreneurial development, and long-term investments (Doepke and Zilibotti 2007; Acemoglu and Zilibotti 1997). However, economic reforms created competing interest groups within the middle class. Public sector employees and middle peasants and betteroff farmers opposed the drive towards privatization which they saw as detrimental to their interests. While employees of the state-owned

130

Chapter Seven

enterprises opposed curtailment of public sector jobs, the middle and better-off peasants opposed any moves towards cutting down subsidies for fertilizers, water, electricity, and credit. When subsidy cuts are announced in budget statements, the resultant protests among affected interested groups often force governments to backtrack, sometimes within days of the original announcement. Employees of government owned undertakings have organized themselves into unions and continue to oppose reforms and downsizing of the state. Employees of insurance and banking sector have gone on strike on several occasions opposing opening of the sector for private investment. Such opposition has slowed down the pace of economic reforms. Employees in the private sector however have gained much from continued process of economic reforms. Employees in the private sector advocate efficiency through market reforms, competition, and accountability of the administrative institutions. They believe that individual initiative is a prerequisite for confronting poverty. Still, in India, direct attack on the welfare state has not occurred but the legitimacy and ideological base of the welfare state are eroding (Palshikar 2002). Liberalization has not led to the decline of state intervention as is often assumed but to a shift in the nature of exercise of power and the emergence of new forms of collaboration between the state and the private sector (Fernandes 2004). In major cities, urban local bodies are either privatized or exploring experiments in public-private partnership, privatization of basic services including education, drinking water, security, and the large-scale removal/shifting of working class areas. While economic reforms contributed to the prosperity of the middle class, large parts of India were witness to endemic poverty and malnutrition. Farmers continue to depend on the monsoon. Yet even in areas of irrigated agriculture there was discontent. According to Sharad Joshi, who established the Shetkari Sanghatana, a farmers’ association which is active in Maharashtra, the main axis of conflict was between “India”, represented by the city-based, English-speaking middle class, and “Bharat”, represented by the villagers. He argued that economic policies consistently favoured “India” over “Bharat”. Fernandes (2004) argues that the new middle class is increasingly forgetting social groups that are marginalized by economic liberalization. She calls this new middle class the “forgetting class”. The growing visibility of the new middle class has resulted in what Rajani Kothari (1993) referred to as a “growing amnesia” towards poverty and the poor in liberalizing India. The visibility of the urban middle classes sets into motion a politics of forgetting with regard to social groups that are marginalized by India’s increased integration into the global economy with the funding and consultancy services by

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

131

multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and ADB. The middle class is the source of all the needed inputs for growth in a neoclassical economy – new ideas, physical capital accumulation, and human capital accumulation. The middle class is not at all prepared to cooperate with the unorganized sector as an ally. It is noted that today’s middle class looks down upon the unorganized urban poor in the same way as the middle class of yesteryear looked down upon blue collar workers: with contempt, suspicion, and unease (Palshikar 2002).

Conclusion The middle class is complex and ambiguous. There is a grounded agreement while ascertaining the topmost and the lowermost strata of society. Such agreement, however, gets confounded while discussing the intermediate strata. As a result, the heterogeneous and complex character of the middle class, the identity of the class, remained as vague and diffused as its political orientation. A major feature of the Indian middle class is its internal diversities of income, occupation, caste, community, and region. Of the two types of middle classes, it is the new middle class which is expanding, particularly after the introduction of liberal economic reforms. In the post-Independence period, the middle class tried to work out an ideological base for the Indian state and advocated a pragmatic approach for the socio-economic and political transformation of the country. Both old and new middle class depend on the state support for the fulfilment of their various demands. The politics of forgetting in contemporary Indian urban politics contributed to neglect of the poor and working classes from urban spaces. The new Indian middle class, which benefited from liberalization, used the state power not only to preserve its interests but also for fulfilling its various demands. Unlike the Western context, the Indian middle class lacks autonomy and it remains dependent on patronage and perpetuates the patronage culture (Jodhka and Prakash 2011). The importance of the Indian middle class emerged on the political scenario during the great victory by the NDA led by the BJP in the second half of 1990s. It was the middle class which supported the right wing parties for different reasons as also due to the relative neglect of this class by Congress. The Congress party often depended on the rural class as well as urban and rural poor. The Left wing parties rather largely depended on workers and left intellectuals. It was only the right wing parties which had full support from the middle class, consisting of educated and white collared workers. It is here that the other parties learnt to pacify the

132

Chapter Seven

emerging new middle class to support them and therefore the importance of new middle class increased substantially. At the state level also, the middle class became increasingly attached to the right wing parties. The middle class has grown explosively as the economic growth rate has risen in the past two decades. Metropolitan transformations have provoked unprecedented mobilization of the urban middle classes, generating new energy and activism around the agendas of protecting public space and improving services. While opening a window of opportunities for the middle class, the state’s liberal policies neglected marginalized sections of the society and a large section of the people are still living in poverty and suffering from malnutrition. The state actively represents the interests of the middle class groups and tends to forget the poor and working classes. The middle class is not at all ready to concede the demands of the workforce in the unorganized sector in urban areas. Robust economic growth with inclusive policies will only help eliminate inequality and further increase in the size of the middle class.

References Abercrombie, Nicolas and John Urry. 1983. Capital Labour and the Middle Classes, London: Allen & Unwin. Acemoglu, D. and F. Zilibotti. 1997. “Was Prometheus Unbound by Chance?”, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 105, No. 4, pp. 709– 751. Ahmad, Imtiaz and Helmut Reifeld. 2002. “Introduction”, in Imtiaz Ahmad & Helmut Reifeld (eds.), India in Middle Class Values in India & Western Europe, New Delhi: Social Science Press. Asian Development Bank. 2010. “Asia’s Emerging Middle Class: Past, Present and Future”, in Key Indicators for Asia and Pacific, Manila. Bajpai, N. and J.D. Sachs. 1999. “The Progress of Policy Reform and Variations in Performance at the Sub-National-level in India”, Development Discussion Paper No. 730. Harvard: Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard University. Bardhan, Pranab. 1994. The Political Economy of Development in India, Fourth edition, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Birdsall, N., C. Graham, and S. Pettinato. 2000. Stuck in the Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling the Middle Class?, Centre on Social and Economic Dynamics, Working Paper No. 14. Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, New York: Monthly Review Press.

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

133

Carchedi, G. 1977. On the Economic Identification of Social Classes, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Corbridge, Stuart, and John Harriss. 2000. Reinventing India: Liberalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press. Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1959. Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Desai, Radhika. 2002. Hindutva’s Gujarat: The Image of India’s Future, Slouching towards Ayodhya, New Delhi: Three Essays Press. Deshpande, Satish. 2003. The Centrality of the Middle Class, Contemporary India: A Sociological View, New Delhi: Penguin Books. Doepke, M. and F. Zilibotti. 2007. Occupational Choice and the Spirit of Capitalism, CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP 6405. Easterly, W. 2001. Middle Class Consensus and Economic Development, Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 317–336. Fernandes, Leela. 2000. “Restructuring the New Middle Class in Liberalizing India”, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Vol. XX, Nos. 1&2, pp. 88–104. Fernandes, Leela. 2004. “The Politics of Forgetting: Class Politics, State Power and the Restructuring of Urban Space in India”, Urban Studies, No. 12 (November), pp. 2415–2430. Fernandes, Leela. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, London: University of Minnesota Press. Gadgil, Madhav. 1998. “The State in/of Cinema”, in Partha Chatterjee (ed.), Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, Ramachandra. 2007. India after Gandhi: the History of the World’s Largest Democracy. London: Macmillan. Harriss-White, Barbara. 2003. India Working: Essays on Society and Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hasan, Zoya. 2002. “Changing Political Orientations of the Middle Classes”, in Imtiaz Ahmad & Helmut Reifeld (eds.), India in Middle Class Values in India & Western Europe, New Delhi: Social Science Press. Heath, Anthony and Yogendra Yadav. 1999. “Social Profile of Congress Voters, 1996 and 1998”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 35 (21–28 August), pp. 2518–2528. Howes, Stephen, Ashok K. Lahiri and Nicholas Stern. 2003. State Level Reforms in India towards More Effective Government. New Delhi: Macmillan. Jaffrelot, Christophe. 1996. Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

134

Chapter Seven

Jaffrelot, Christophe. 2013. “A Class of his Own”, The Indian Express (17 April). Jodhka, Surinder S. and Aseem Prakash. 2011. The Indian Middle Class: Emerging Cultures of Politics and Economics, KAS International Reports, 12. Kannan, K.P. and G. Raveendran. 2011. “India’s Common People: The Regional Profile”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLVI, No. 39 (17–24 September), pp. 60–73. Kharas, H. 2010. “The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries”, Working Paper 285, Paris: OECD Development Centre. Khemani, Stuti. 2003. “Partisan Politics and Intergovernmental Transfers in India”, in Policy Research Working Paper No. 3016, Washington, DC: World Bank. Kohli, Atul. 1989. “The Politics of Economic Liberalization in India”, World Development, Vol. 17, No. 3 (March), pp. 305–328. Kothari, R. 1993. Growing Amnesia: An Essay on Poverty and Human Consciousness, New Delhi: Viking. Kumar, Sanjay. 2004. “Impact of Economic Reforms on Indian Electorate”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 16 (17 April), pp. 1621–1630. Marx, Karl and F. Engels. 1967. Manifesto of the Communist Party, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Mazzarella, William. 1999. Middle Class, at http://www.soas.ac.uk/csasfiles/keywords/Mazzarella-middleclass.pdf [Modi.] 2013. “Modi and the Numbers Game”, The Hindu (12 June). Outlook, 2004. “NDA Shining: 290 Watts, Opinion Polls”, Outlook Magazine (15 March). Palshikar, Suhas. 2002. “Politics of India’s Middle Classes”, in Imtiaz Ahmad & Helmut Reifeld (eds), India in Middle Class Values in India & Western Europe, New Delhi: Social Science Press. Poulantzas, Nicos. 1975. Classes in Contemporary Capitalism, London: New Left Books. Rajagopal, Arvind. 2001. Politics after Television: Religious Nationalism and the Making of a Hindu Public, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Roberts, K., F. G. Cook, S. C. Clark, and Elizabeth Semeonoff. 1977. The Fragmentary Class Structure, London: Heinemann Educational. Shukla, Rajesh, and Roopa Purushothaman. 2008. “The Next Urban Frontier: Twenty Cities to Watch”, New Delhi: National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and Future Capital Research (FCR).

The Indian Middle Class and its Politics

135

Sridharan, E. 2004. “The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India’s Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization”, India Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 405-438. Varma, Pavan K. 2007. The Great Indian Middle Class, New Delhi: Penguin Books India. Westergaard, J., and H. Resler. 1975. Class in a Capitalist Society: A Study of Contemporary Britain, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wright, E.O. 1978. Class, Crisis and the State, London: New Left Books. Yadav, Yogendra, Sanjay Kumar, and Oliver Heath. 1999. “The BJP’s New Social Block”, Frontline (19 November).

CHAPTER EIGHT MIDDLE CLASS POLITICS IN INDIA AND THE GROWTH OF THE ANTI-CORRUPTION MOVEMENTS AND THE AAM AADMI PARTY ASHUTOSH KUMAR

The Argument in Context While there seems to be emerging an agreement that the middle classes as such have been on the rise in India recently, there seems to be not much agreement about the various segments of this grouping, especially the ones that actually constitute/represent this social and political category. In the relevant academic literature, middle class comes across as a “notoriously loose/indeterminate social category” with “questionable explanatory value” (Deshpande 2003:129; Joshi 2001:1; Saavala 2010).1 In economic terms, contemporary India is supposed to have been witness to the presence of an upper middle class, lower middle class and also a middle class without any prefix, unlike a singular rich or poor class. The entry of a range of new social categories into the Indian middle class, divided broadly in social/spatial terms and also in terms of their orientations and choices, as discussed in the following parts, has made it possible to argue in terms of middle “classes”2 rather than as a single homogenous class. While considering the historical processes of the formation of middle class since the colonial period, the present article attempts to track its gradual expansion and continued influence in post-colonial India. The economic and democratic transition experienced in recent India, the research suggests, has led to the emergence of the “new” middle class, as the “old” middle class fades away. Based on a review of relevant academic literature and supplemented by reading of parties’ manifestos and the available data from CSDS-NES’ 2004 and 2009 surveys, this article suggests that the shifting economic, cultural and political choices and concerns of the emerging “new” middle

Middle Class Politics in India

137

class, especially its urban/professional middle and upper middle class segments, have distinctly influenced the way politics and economics have been taking shape in contemporary India. Such an argument remains contentious and therefore needs substantiation considering the relative lack of presence of the “new” middle class in numerical terms along with its perceived apathy. The latter is arguably a distinct disadvantage in what is increasingly becoming a vibrant electoral democracy, crowded by newly mobilized and politicized citizens belonging to various underprivileged classes. One possible way of demonstrating the growing significance of the “new” middle class, it is suggested here, can be to explore the nature and repercussion of alternative/reformist mode of politics actively being pursued by the “new” middle class in the form of Anna-Hazare-led “India Against Corruption” (IAC) campaign whose closure was followed by the formation of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal, an erstwhile Anna team member, that made a spectacular electoral debut in the Delhi Assembly elections of 2013.3 In the process AAP, a nascent party with meagre resources, very few known and politically tried public faces, loose organizational setup, and untidily worked out manifesto, seems to have effectively rewritten the hitherto established/accepted rules of doing electoral politics that had come to essentially rely in recent India on narrow/parochial identities based politicization and mobilization, with the promise of sectarian patronage and protection.

The “Old” Middle Class Unlike the present times, in colonial India there existed a relatively homogeneous4 “traditional/old” middle class. Constituted largely of male members belonging to elite caste Hindus, aristocratic Muslims, and other high-status professional/service communities, it mainly inhabited the urban spaces that had come up with the advent of the colonial variant of modernity (Joshi 2010: xviii). This “native” middle class was essentially a product of the modern education system introduced by Macaulay to serve as the pillar of the empire. While mastery over the imperial language became the key to the hallowed category of “brown sahibs”, inability to converse in their mother tongue became the hallmark of “some highly intelligent baboos” (Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, quoted in Varma 2010: 63). The indigenous middle class was distinct from its “authentic” counterpart in the advanced industrialized countries of the imperial West

138

Chapter Eight

in at least three respects (Beteille 2007: 952; Chatterjee 1993; Deshpande 2003: 146; Joshi 2001: 7, 22; Joshi 2010: xviii; Nandy 1995: 197). First, the colonial middle class hardly had an opportunity to turn into an industrial middle class like its counterpart in the advanced capitalist countries. This was due to the structural constraints imposed on India’s economy by colonial state policies and practices. Being essentially a product of the material and cultural conditions created under the colonial mode of production, the “native” middle class, instead of being a “manufacturing class”, was itself culturally “manufactured/invented” by the imperial masters. Second, the “native” middle class, unlike its western counterpart, continued to retain its inherited caste-, community-, and gender-based privileges along with its “primordial attachments to pre-modern beliefs”. At the same time, as evidenced even in post-colonial India, it also sought to delegitimize the language of caste in the realm of politics during the anti-colonial movement. Third, being “culturally manufactured” by the colonial regime did not deter the nationalist “non-state” middle class segment from putting up resistance against colonial domination by creating its own “new cultural politics”. The segment claimed an “‘inner spiritual, culturally sovereign realm” independent of colonial state practices (Chatterjee 1993: 6). At the same time it competed along western standards in the “outer” realm of politics and economy. Undertaking such an endeavour, the middle class was able to provide “the base line for a critique of modernity as well as of tradition” (Nandy 1995: 197). Thus, more than the usual sociological markers like status, education, income and occupation, as was and is the case with western middle classes, it was the ability to be “cultural entrepreneurs” that essentially characterized the distinctive nature of the “native” middle class and explained its critical influence in colonial India especially in urban spaces, despite remaining what the Marquis Of Dufferin and Ava called a “‘microscopic minority” (Joshi 2001: 7). This literary, professional, and culturally alive/creative nationalist middle class, actively involved in the anti-colonial movement in a leadership role, was grudgingly accorded certain rights by the colonial regime to political representation and “rights to organise a diverse range of cultural and civil associations and vernacular public spheres” (Hansen 1999: 32). The core leadership of Congress, from its inception and even during the Gandhi-led “mass-based grassroots form of mobilisation” days, was drawn from the minuscule “old” middle class that virtually “created Indian nationalism” and contributed to the process of shaping important

Middle Class Politics in India

139

ideas and practices of modern India (Deshpande 2003:143; Fernandes 2007:18; Joshi 2010: xv).

The “Modernizing” Middle Class The same nationalist middle-class Congress leadership took over the reins of political power after decolonization. The familiar social world of the traditional old middle class continued to be overwhelmingly represented in the inherited as well as newly created political and state institutions.5 Acquisition of modern education, cultural/civic values, and professional skills also continued to be the predominant form of “mobile social capital”,6 especially for the aspiring social segments eager to join the “governing” class. The incumbent bureaucratic/professional middle class was entrusted with the mammoth task of nation building by “producing the Indian people as a national people through reform and education” (Hansen 1999: 47). As a part of the democratic project of consensus building around the foundational values of the nascent democracy, the middle class elite, acting as an agency in the Gramscian sense, mediated with a large number of diverse social-political forces unleashed in the aftermath of decolonization. In the economic domain, the middle class governing elite became the “sanctioned actor/favoured agent” of state-led growth and development (Rajagopal 2011:4).7 Facing stiff opposition to his economic and social policies from the conservative rightist elements within his own party, prime minister Nehru turned towards the techno-bureaucratic middle class elite with whom he shared a close linguistic and cultural affinity and also his vision for the realization of his dream of building a modern socialist India of “planned cities, industries, factories, and big dams” (Khilnani 1997). An iconic figure then and even now for the middle classes, Nehru candidly admitted in his autobiography: “My politics had been those of my class, the bourgeoisie. Indeed, all vocal politics then (and to a great extent even now) were those of the middle classes” (Nehru [1946] 1998: 57).8 The fabled “steel frame” was thus rechristened and retained, peopled by the same “old” middle class stock along with addition of new entrants having not so privileged a pedigree, but the same cultural capital. Retention of an over-developed state apparatus, ostensibly now for developmental purposes, enabled the middle class “professionals in public sectors” in possession of cultural capital to join as a constituent class in the “dominant coalition/ruling class alliance” along with the other proprietary

140

Chapter Eight

classes in possession of “physical capital” (Alavi 1972; Bardhan 1999; Kaviraj 1986; Vanaik 1990; Deshpande 2003).9

Expansion of the Middle Class What explains the phenomenal growth of the middle class in late postcolonial India coinciding with emergence of “new” middle class categories? The following factors may be considered. First, the spread of a vernacular form of modern education, combined with state-led affirmative policies and actions of welfare based on “protective discrimination” (read reservations in the higher education sector and public employment, among others) witnessed a manifold expansion of the middle class, making it far more representative in both social and spatial terms. Second, new opportunity structures that opened up in an increasingly urbanizing and industrializing post-colonial India allowed for social and economic mobility. A sizeable number of land-owning non-elite peasant castes, mostly inhabiting village India, until now immobile both in spatial and professional terms, now moved to the fast growing relatively emancipated semi-urban/rural towns and cities, taking up professions in rapidly expanding public sectors and adopting modern cultural attributes that entitled them to claim membership of the hitherto exclusive middle class (Srinivas 1966: 90).10 Third, the process of agrarian change in the form of land reforms and Green Revolution in many states of India which saw the emergence of a new breed of capitalist farmers. The newly rich landed peasantry now had the means to turn towards urban life and industry and also to invest in their children’s higher education. As a result, a distinct “new” middle class emerged, with roots in agricultural development (Jodhka et al. 2006: 1535; Sinha 2009: 198). Fourth, the growth of the urban/professional middle class segment of a “new” middle class which can be attributed to the introduction of policies of neo-liberal economic reforms leading to primacy of market relations and a culture of consumerism that began in real earnest in the late eighties and early nineties India. The continuing process of economic transition has led to the rise of a distinct “metropolitan” middle class replacing the tiny “old” Nehruvian middle class, arguably its precursor in social and cultural terms.11

Middle Class Politics in India

141

Measuring the Middle Class While there is wide agreement about the impressive growth in the size of the middle class,12 efforts to precisely measure it remains cumbersome due to the vagueness of the social category itself. One way of enumeration may be by self-identification considering the fact that a sense of middle class belongings is always more a state of mind13 than a matter of actual economic status. It seems to be fashionable even for the rich to identify themselves as middle class as revealed in successive CSDS-NES surveys.14 The much more credible and acceptable alternative has been to measure on an objective basis. Quantifiable in nature, it is based on the criteria of the possession of cultural (education) and material capital. As with the standard criteria used for CSDS election survey purposes, the class variable has always been defined in terms of the economic assets and income of an individual (Sheth 1999: 2509).15 The numbers estimated so far by analysts greatly vary due to the use of different criteria that are not merely economic but also sociological or a combination of both.16 It falls between 100 and 250 million (Sridharan 2004) to 200–250 million (Sanghvi 2005) to 300–350 million (HarrissWhite 2003; Tharoor 2005; Fernandes and Heller 2006; Brosius 2010; Joshi 2010; Saxena 2010), the exact number depending on the criteria used for enumeration. Based on the NCAER survey data, Shukla (2009) has estimated that in 2001–02, “middle income households” were around 6% of all India’s population, growing to 13% in 2009–10. An estimate using higher education as the definer of group identity put one eighth of the population in India into the middle class category (Kapur 2010: 147). Even conceding the problem with the definition (lower/upper) and the varying criteria (income/ occupation/consumption/education/values) to be used to identify middle class members and also the apprehension that some of these figures may be inflated by statistical manipulation, the fact remains that in terms of sheer numbers, Indian middle class is bigger in size than the entire population of most of the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and is almost as big as the US population.17 Being one of the largest middle classes in the world possibly next to that of China,18 the middle class is the fastest growing segment of India’s population. According to available projections, while India’s population is likely to increase by approximately 30% between 2005 and 2025, the middle class population will increase almost ten times during the same period (Saxena 2010: 2; Ravallion 2009).19

142

Chapter Eight

Ideological and Cultural Shifts It is the rise of the urban “new2” middle class, dubbed “metropolitan” on account of its association with the transnational corporate sectors that are based in the mega/fast growing cities,20 that has been widely hailed by pro-reform analysts as one of the most striking features of a resurgent India (Das 2002). This “new” middle class segment has come closely to identify as well as represent the significant “ideological and cultural shifts” associated with the wind of neo-liberalism that is sweeping across “shining/uncaged” India and whose processes have benefited it immensely (Beinhocker, Farrell, and Zainulbhai 2007). Being comparatively more homogeneous,21 this technocratic/ managerial/professional segment of the “new” urban middle class, despite being the progeny of the Nehruvian left-leaning middle class, has since then changed its social stance. It now vouches for the benefits of the rolling back of the state from the social and economic sectors and toes the line of the ascendant global entrepreneurial/corporate capitalist class in extending uncritical support for reformist measures like reduction in direct taxes, deregulation, privatization, efficient public service delivery, and greater access to consumer goods. Viewing themselves as the primary agents of market forces, these self-proclaimed “global citizens” unabashedly pursue a good life marked by mobility, security, luxury, and choice.22 The new “global cities” are dotted with multiplexes, exclusive clubs, community centres, self-enclosed townships, and gated residential complexes segregated from the subaltern neighbourhoods.23 Further, symptomatic of changing times, it is not the once coveted civil services but high-paying corporate jobs that enjoy iconic status for the aspiring “new” middle class youth (Deshpande 2003: 150; Sitapati 2011: 42). Eager to exploit the new market opportunities presented before it in the form of bourgeoning information technology and knowledge-based service sectors24 that have coincided with the dismantling of the licence-quota regime and opening of the market, the aspiring “new” middle class has been pushing hard for doing away with what it has come to view “now” as remnants of a thoroughly corrupt and inefficient model of development planning (Harriss 2010: 150). Two main factors, however, explain the proclivity to opt for “soft” rather than “hard” reforms by successive political regimes in India since 1991. And here also ironically the middle class factor comes to play apart from the resistance of the lower classes. Opposition to “hard” reforms in the public sector has come from the sizeable presence of the “state-segment” of the lower and middle class

Middle Class Politics in India

143

employed in the public sector with their fat salaries with annual increments and cost-of-living allowances/emoluments/privileges along with publicly subsidized rich agriculturalists in the same middle class category. These numerically stronger but less privileged segments of the middle class, for obvious reasons, favour moderate reforms as opposed to “hard” reforms like relentless privatization as it still needs state employment as well as state supported basic services like higher education and advanced health care. Unlike their more privileged counterparts they can hardly afford to send their wards to foreign universities or use the services of extremely costly private hospitals. This explains why both in 2004 and 2009, in the CSDS-NES survey (22,295 and 30,212 respondents sampled respectively from all over India), while 25% (1509) and 21% (1492) of middle class respondents respectively were pro-privatization, a larger percentage i.e. 46% (2808) and 48% (3459) of respondents held only moderate views on privatization (CSDS Data Unit). What explains the overall support of the “new” middle class is its growing tendency to “aggressive consumption”.25 By adopting a consumerist culture, the middle class has made a major cultural shift from the old world “modesty and understatement” (Saavala, 2010).26 What allows the “new” middle class segments to go for consumerism is the ready availability of disposable income. Unlike today, serious constraints on income and discretionary spending along with “huge moral anxieties” in the form of Gandhian insistence on simple living and being duty bound to use one’s privileged position for the common good were among the factors that caused the “old” Indian middle class to abhor any idea of being part of “consumer society” as “inappropriate” and self-serving (Trentmann 2010: 35–36; Mathur 2010: 211; Haynes et al. 2010). Significantly, the “new” middle class’ relentless pursuit of pleasure has come in for sharp criticism at the hands of its own intelligentsia for its apathy, self-righteousness, its reckless consumerism, its “penchant to ape the west” by promoting “buying culture”/”mall culture” and also its “muddle-headedness” and “hypocrisy” (Fernandes and Heller 2006: 3; Ahmad and Reifeld 2002: Introduction; Varma 2007; Kumar 2011:14). Besides, the emergent “new” middle class has also received fierce criticism for its growing inclination towards and support for illiberal Hindutva politics as opposed to the secular politics it espoused for so long (Ghosh 2011: 156). The political-cultural role of the “new” middle class is reflected in the rise of the “saffron wave” in the momentous decade of the 90s and its electoral preference for the Hindutva parties has been well recognized and commented upon (Yadav, Kumar and Heath 1999). 27 How

144

Chapter Eight

to make sense of the visible shift, given its still closer embrace of western pro-democratic ideas/values? Arguably, both economic liberalization and Hindu nationalism, with their sometimes “contradictory but often surprisingly complementary agendas” for the “reinvention” of “incredible India”, can be described as “vehicles” for meeting the material and cultural interests and aspirations of the “new” middle class segments. Also, such a support may also be viewed as the “backlash” of the mostly elite caste “metropolitan” middle class against the indeterminate processes of middle/lower caste assertion and regionalization that threaten its dream of a “harmonious, perfectly organised great nation-state”. Insistence on pan-Indian cultural nationalism as well as speedier reforms thus has served as an antidote to the ascendant ethnic politics (Bhatt 2006: 136). Also, the “new” middle class displays growing religiosity based on cultural nationalism, which may be attributed to “a growing sense of alienation and feeling of threat vis-à-vis the West” among the “new” middle class, especially the ones settled abroad (Saavala 2010: 151; Hansen 1999; Varma 2007). Arguably, wedged between the upper and lower echelons of civil society in an India in transition, the Indian “new” middle class is likely to feel its “middleness” more threatened by the danger of a fall than the other, longer established middle classes of the west (Hawley 2001: 219).

Setting the Economic Agenda The above ideological shift concerning “new” middle class has also been reflected in evolving public policy paradigm in liberalizing India, especially in the economic domain. That the “new” middle class has had a much wider political influence than widely perceived is best illustrated in the way the two polity-wide coalition making parties namely the Congress and the BJP have been lending their uncritical support for the market reforms measures28 in order to court the middle class support (Kumar 2013).29 Even a cursory reading of the two polity-wide parties’ manifestos and campaigns during the last two parliamentary elections reveals the two parties’ eagerness to win the new middle class support. The ill-fated “India shining” campaign30 launched by the BJP-led NDA during the 2004 elections was one such strategy. It aimed at confusing the concerns and feelings of the resurgent “metropolitan” middle class with that of the entire country.31 The Congress on its part in its 2004 manifesto stated that “the middle class of India is the proud creation of Congress” and that the

Middle Class Politics in India

145

policies of the party if voted to power were to be “in sync with their aspirations”.32 Symptomatic of changing times, the 2009 elections witnessed both parties’ campaigners targeting the middle classes through internet marketing campaigns and their manifestos making promises to broaden and deepen economic reforms, providing incentives and environments for increased foreign direct investment, tax reforms, and the continuation of privatization, though in selective form. The stated aim now became also to make India “a global manufacturing hub” by enabling Indian products, services, and entrepreneurs to dominate the domestic as well as the global market, creating a world-class infrastructure for the cities.33 The texts of the manifestos of the two coalition parties at the centre in the past two general elections at least in part read like global funding agencies’ agenda papers (Kumar 2013). In the run up to the impending 2014 elections, both parties as well as leaders like Narendra Modi have been active on social media (Twitter and Facebook) to address the techno-savvy middle classes.34 Even the “home-grown” leaders from the state level parties like Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav are not behind in their attempt to woo the mobile-phone-holding aspiring lower-middle classes from semi-urban locales.35 Symptomatic of the shift in focus, the recent electoral success of the state level leaders like Modi, Raman Singh and Shivraj Singh Chauhan – all from a “Hindutva” party like BJP – has been mainly attributed to their reaping the “development dividend” rather than “social engineering”. As pointed out earlier, such efforts on the part of the parties across the board to shift the focus presents a puzzle as the “new” middle class does not enjoy much demographic weight and also has not been much visible in the electoral arena,36 the two factors crucial for political democracy.37 In fact, there is a sizeable section of the society in India that remains antireform despite all the rhetoric about the virtues of the market. In 2004 and 2009 CSDS-NES surveys, 28% and 32 % of the electorates antiprivatization views. The resistance was much greater earlier especially among the lower classes and castes/communities as revealed in the 1996, 1998 and 1999 CSDS-NES surveys (Kumar 2009). If, despite the resistance, the reforms have continued incrementally, among other factors, it is due to the crucial support provided by reformist “new” middle class acting as a “buffer class” to affluent entrepreneurial class of Indian industrialists and businessmen (Sinha 2009: 196; Kumar 2009: 738–739). The “new” middle class influence is derived from its possession of advanced professional credentials and/or accumulated cultural capital that enables its members to occupy positions of recognized authority in the government, corporate sector, media, and judiciary. Its

146

Chapter Eight

hold over Indian institutions – political and cultural – enables the entrepreneurial class to gain moral-political sway while pursuing its reformist agenda (Fernandes and Heller 2006: 500). 38

The “India Against Corruption” Movement and the Aam Aadmi Party: A New Mode of Politics If the emergent “new” middle class has succeeded in having more influence over the political class, as argued above, then what really explains the growing disenchantment of the “new” middle class with mainstream parties as well as the prevalent mode of electoral politics?39 Can the perceived apathy be attributed simply to its overwhelming concern with economic rather than political issues (Saxena, 2010: 6)? Is this due to the growing wariness about the parties’ political activities that primarily aim at managing numbers to win elections by resorting to identities-based politicization and mobilization while ignoring the substantive issues related to governance, service delivery, and human security concerning the larger middle classes posing as “common man” (aam admi)? Why has the “new” middle class, especially its urban segment, long been resorting to the non-party “new politics” built around local associations in civil society (NGOs funded mostly by global/multilateral capital) and the new middle class icons, speaking with an urban, middle class accent often using juridical/technical jargon40 rather than taking a conventional electoral route? And finally, what has prompted the same middle class to enter the hitherto detested electoral arena, taking on the long-established parties and making such a success of it? For someone looking for possible answers to some of the above questions, examining the now defunct “India against Corruption” movement spearheaded by the saintly Anna Hazare in 2011 that paved the way for the formation of the Aam Adami Party (AAP) in late 2012 by erstwhile Anna team members led by Arvind Kejriwal can be most instructive. Demanding the institution of a strong Jan Lokpal to cleanse the system riddled with corruption in higher places, the Anna-led movement had a distinctive urban middle class support base and also showed its longterm penchant to look for legal solutions to institutional/political problems. The seeming capitulation of an otherwise recalcitrant government and opposition in the Parliament in the face of popular protest propelled by the fast unto death of Anna Hazare undertaken in the capital city of Delhi as it accepted the core demands of the campaign albeit “in principle” duly exhibited the growing clout of the “new” middle class (Kumar 2011). Despite the parties dithering over their promise by resorting to lengthy

Middle Class Politics in India

147

parliamentary procedures for close to two years, corruption in high places remained one of the core electoral issues in the recent state elections, as revealed in the CSDS-NES surveys. A series of electoral reverses suffered by Congress tainted by major scams followed by the spectacular electoral debut of the AAP in the Delhi elections convinced both the Congress and the ascendant BJP to finally come together to institute Lokpal by parliamentary legislation in late 2013.41 The success of the IAC in generating massive support and the reluctance of the political class to undertake corrective measures were the two factors that possibly prompted the erstwhile Anna team members, led by Arvind Kejriwal, an IIT alumnus and bureaucrat turned social activist, to resort to the hitherto shunned electoral route to reinforce the “new” middle class endeavour to strengthen the “cleanse India” project. The IAC movement as well as the formation of the AAP have both revealed the middle class’ distinctive lack of confidence in the corrupt and selfindulgent political class and a political culture that thrives on identity based sectarian populist electoral politics. What explains the wider support that the “new” middle class has received in its political initiatives is not only to be attributed to the impressive media coverage (24/7 cable), social media and technology aided instant connectivity (cell phones/internet) but also the growing realization among ordinary masses including aam adami (increasingly identifiable with the less privileged middle class)42 that rampant corruption comes in the way of the implementation of affirmative policies including the direct transfer of state resources in terms of subsidies and freebies. As for the elite “new” middle class segment, endemic corruption corroding the state institutions and services remains a serious impediment to the ongoing process of neo-liberal market-oriented growth that is propelled by the infusion of global capital and the arrival of the corporate sector and with which its class interests are crucially linked. The recent deceleration in the economic growth rate has been attributed to corruption in high places that is discouraging private investment. The tax-paying discontented middle class not only demands the hassle free delivery of basic services but also takes a very dim view of corrupt and self-serving government officials in league with their political bosses whom it considers to be looting public funds and thwarting growth. While IAC protests showed the proclivity of the ascendant elitist “new” middle class leading the ordinary citizens across communities as foot soldiers to virtually dictate the state institutions and circumvent the democratic procedures, the electoral participation of the AAP and its agreeing to form a government with the outside unconditional support of

148

Chapter Eight

the Congress in Delhi seems somewhat assuring on this front. The electoral failure of the AAP, just like the Jan Satta Party or the Peace Party, the other two middle class parties, might have rekindled the effort to revert to non-party “new politics” based on legal activism/theatrical media powered campaign, ironically claimed to be inspired by the Gandhian mode of satyagraha politics. Whether such an alternative mode of “new-old” politics being propagated and practised by the “new” middle-class-led AAP would succeed in getting its political and economic agenda accepted through an electoral or non-electoral route at all-India level looks like a distant possibility as of now. Arguably, the relative successes of IAC or AAP experiments have been played out in a controlled laboratory-like situation in a predominantly middle class city-state like Delhi and under a Congress-led UPA regime that has been reeling under the discovery of one major scam after another. Also, both the IAC and the AAP harped on limited popular issues like combating corruption, price rises, and public service delivery (drinking water/electricity/drainage system/law and order) during its campaign in a plebiscitary mode while skirting most of the ticklish issues that are bound to crop up as the initial euphoria subsides and mainstream parties learn their lessons and hit back. Would the ascendant “new” middle class, having experimented and tasted unexpected electoral success, be able to finally get its own concerns and feelings identified with the underclasses of the entire country, as its party prepares itself for impending Lok Sabha elections? And what about the distinct economic, cultural, and political choices and concerns of the lower and lower middle class segments that are dissimilar in sociological as well as spatial origins? After all, regional/salaried middle class elites, especially the ones belonging to lower castes and rooted in village or semi-urban India, not only continue to remain deeply attached to the communities of their birth but also articulate their numerically strong and newly politicized/mobilized communities’ democratic aspirations in the affirmative language of dignity, presence, and substantive equality. Would a future democratic regime led by middle class parties like the AAP be able to accommodate newly mobilized and assertive lower-caste/classbased collective claims by continuing anti-reform affirmative policies and actions that allow huge direct and indirect transfer of public resources in the form of subsidies and protective/compensatory discrimination to the lower castes/class with the same zeal? The murmur of discontent is already being heard in Delhi as the AAP government is finding it difficult to fulfil its twenty promises.43 Political symbolism (the broom as a party symbol, Gandhi-like AAP cap/austerity) and innovative electoral strategies

Middle Class Politics in India

149

(seventy manifestos for each constituency, setting up neighbourhood committees, transparent electoral funding, etc.) helps but only in a limited way in the long term. All these concerns get credence as the AAP so far has not spelled out its social and economic agenda except its resolve to fight corruption, ensure clean and effective governance, and establish “true” swaraj (self-rule) by shifting power to local bodies (Kejriwal 2012).

Summing Up As researchers on the middle classes we live in interesting times in South Asia. The present article argues that that there is no single social category present in contemporary India that enables us to define middle class as an entity or essence (Brosius 2010: 14; Beteille 2001: 77; Beteille 2007: 951). It refers to the political and economic processes that have led to an expansion of middle class and also led to the creation of the “new” segments within it. Focusing on the “new” middle class, especially its urban segment, our core argument is that its distinct choices/priorities have underpinned the politics and economy in recent India in a much greater way than its actual numbers suggest. Despite reflecting heterogeneity in economic terms and in terms of social origin and cultural attributes, the “new” middle class, for long considered politically insignificant and apathetic, finally seems to be having recourse to political activism through both non-electoral and electoral routes as the IAC and AAP experiments have shown. This is how it hopes to push for faster/greater reforms and ensure clean and effective governance. After reeling for long under a neo-patrimonial corrupted political system that thrived on sectarian populism, the “new” middle class in a throwback to Nehruvian India seems determined now to recover its ability to “set the terms of reference of Indian (political) society” (Jaffrelot and van der Veer 2008: 19) by promising change as did Obama.

Notes 1

Based on National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) data, Sridharan (2004) has identified three categories of the middle classes in India on the basis of income: elite middle class, expanded middle class, broadest middle class. Rudra in an unrelated article made a distinction between the “elite” and “mass” fractions of the middle classes in India underlining an “intelligentsia versus lower-and middle-middle class split” (Rudra, 1989). 2 Even in his pioneering study on the subject, B.B. Misra had used the term middle classes for industrial, commercial, landed, and educational segments (Misra 1961).

150 3

Chapter Eight

The Aam Aadmi Party won twenty-eight seats in the seventy-member Assembly. Sheila Dikshit, three times Chief Minister, was defeated in her own constituency by Arvind Kejriwal, even as the Congress slumped to its worst ever performance, managing only 8 seats. In the process, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) riding on Modi wave elsewhere in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh that also witnessed elections along with Delhi, was denied what everybody thought was very much a winnable election. Subsequently, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government was formed with what AAP claimed was unconditional outside support from the Congress. Facing opposition from both the Congress and the BJP on the Jan Lok Pal issue, the AAP government resigned after nearly two eventful months in power, which saw the subsidies on electricity as well as drinking water for people with capping as well as protesting against the inaction of Centrecontrolled Delhi police to tackle crime in the capital city. 4 If there was any variance within such a homogenized, hegemonized and socially exclusive “Bhadra Lok” of colonial Bengal (i.e., Calcutta) and elsewhere in colonial India (especially located in the residencies cities of Bombay, Madras, and the capital city of Delhi after 1911), it was in terms of its varied professional choices as “like Vishnu2, the native “baboos” had “ten incarnations, namely clerk, teacher, Brahmo, accountant, doctor, lawyer, magistrate, landlord, editor and unemployed” (Bankim Chandra Chatterjee quoted in Varma 2007: 5). 5 What continued to be known as “high culture” (i.e., middle class culture) even after independence remained essentially the culture of the urban middle class mainly represented by the three upper caste communities namely Brahmins, Baniyas, and Kayasthas in varying degrees in north India (Patel 2011: 51). 6 Significantly, there has always been a Hindi speaking middle class in the Hindi heartland states with their command over Sanskritized khadi boli as a marker of superiority over the dialect-speaking masses. 7 Such an idea was in consonance with the formulation of the political development theorists in the fifties and sixties who contended that the “modernizing elite” with middle class roots would be supportive of moderate democratic parties. 8 In a more general sense, there was also an element of the influence of colonial political culture that had purposely projected the political class, especially at the provincial level, as “susceptible to particularism” as it faced enormous “sectional pressure” in a diverse society like India. It was therefore considered best to restrict its “real function” to the barely advisory in nature, while the task of policy formulation (and also its implementation/supervision aspects) was to be left to the trusted bureaucratic-managerial middle class elite. It was this colonial cultural legacy that promoted and nurtured the idea of the expansion of state authority under the nascent democratic regime (Jayal 2001:53). 9 The role of the intelligentsia as the third dominant class being a constituent of the dominant ruling coalition in the relatively autonomous post-colonial Indian State (the other two constituents being the industrial bourgeoisie and the rich capitalist farmers) was taken up for a discussion initiated by Rudra (1989) followed by responses from Bardhan (1989) and Beteille (1989). Rudra referred to white-collar workers in public and private sectors, educated professionals, politicians, and trade union leaders as constituting this intelligentsia. Significantly, what Rudra called

Middle Class Politics in India

151

“the rise of the intelligentsia”, while underlining its expansion, and “a certain maturation” in the post-colonial period may now be read as the formation of a “new” middle class (Rajagopal, 2011: 13). 10 The newly created heterogeneities within castes are the result of varied levels of income, lifestyles, tastes, occupations, and education unlike the past, when the members of a particular caste were more or less equal in terms of status and lifestyle (Sheth, 1999: 2504). 11 Rajagopal refers to the “historical interlude of the Emergency”, which separated two different phases of the Indian middle class, “the former being under the hegemony of the state, and the latter, increasingly assertive, but disenchanted with erstwhile forms of politics, defining itself through cultural and consumerist forms of identity”. By the 1980s, a “newly fashioned investing middle class was acquiring a life of its own” (2011: 3) 12 Compared to the conservative growth rate of 3.5% during the period 1950–1980, India registered more than 6% average growth rate after the initiation of reform. 13 Joshi (2010) has used the term “middle class-ness”. 14 In CSDS-NES’ 2004 and 2009 surveys the following question pertaining to the respondent’s subjective self-identification was asked: “There is quite a bit of talk these days about different social classes. Some people say they belong to the middle class, others . . . working class, yet others say they do not belong to either of these classes . . . to which class would you say you belong?” In NES’ 2004 postpoll survey 41.5% said they belonged to the middle class. The figure was 38% (11,227 out of 27,189 respondents interviewed) in NES’ 2009 (CSDS data unit). 15 In CSDS-NES’ 2009 survey, 27.2% of the respondents interviewed were put into the middle class category (8,018 out of 29,471 interviewed). Using the consumption based criterion, the CNN-IBN survey of the middle class conducted by CSDS estimated it to be 20% (CSDS data Unit). 16 Sridharan (2004) has used a combination of income and (non-manual) occupation for enumeration purposes. 17 In Europe and USA, however, almost the entire society is middle class. That explains why in the West the term popularly used is middle class “society” and not middle class “people” (Gupta, 2008). 18 Compared to 29% of Indians who live in urban areas; the figure is 40% for China. 19 Based on the National Council of Applied Economic Research as well as the Indian Government’s National Sample Survey database relating to household income and spending, the McKinsey Global Institute has projected that middle classes will grow to 41% (583 million) of India’s population by 2025 (Beinhocker, Farrel, and Zainulbhai, 2007). 20 Fernandes and Heller (2006) have used the term “metropolitan” middle class to denote the upper middle class having urban roots. 21 The “metropolitan” middle class has increasingly come to define itself through a cultural and consumerist form of identity. Community based identity retains its salience, though in a much muted form. 22 In a study conducted by Hindustan Times-CNN-IBN-CSDS that was based on face to face interviews with 3,069 middle class respondents sampled from the

152

Chapter Eight

cross-sectional national survey of 15,373 respondents from 970 locations in 19 states of India, it was found that more than half of them preferred a good lifestyle (wish list includes consumer items, better command over English, travelling, eating out, settling in big cities or abroad) over a simple one (Hindustan Times, 27 January 2007). 23 Sinha (2009: 200) suggests that “the consumption of US popular culture implicitly promotes support for western-style democratic institutions” among the educated middle classes in India. 24 The service sector grew by 34.4% in the last two decades, accounting for more than 50% of India’s annual GDP. The figure most likely would go up (Kapur, 2002: 92). 25 Taking cognizance of the dramatic leap in the level of consumption, McKinsey has forecast that India by 2025 is likely to consume four times as much as it did in 2005, giving it the distinction of being the fifth largest consumer market in the world (Trentmann, 2010: 36). 26 What makes the urban middle-class take on consumer culture most interesting is that many people “draw rhetorically on Gandhian ideals of frugality and asceticism but present the centrality of consumer culture in their own life with equal ease” (Mathur 2010: 226). 27 CSDS-Lokniti NES data covering all the Lok Sabha elections since 1996 have consistently shown that the urban middle class has remained a significant “social bloc” of the BJP. The party, as per survey data, has consistently “secured more votes among the upper caste, upper class, educated voters, and men and within urban areas than among the less privileged counterpart in each of these categories” (Yadav and Palshikar 2009: 39; Yadav 1999; Sheth 2009: 73). 28 Many of the state parties receive critical political and material support from the new generation of regional business groups/agrarian rooted capitalist entrepreneurs (Maharashtra, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu to name a few). 29 Interestingly, the Left parties (not when in the government!), as a result of their opposition to market model of growth, are supposed to have lost the “support of some of the most vocal and articulate voices of dissent and protest they relied on in the past” as the middle class they belonged to have now crossed over to the defence of neo-liberalism (Chandrasekhar 2011: 27). 30 The campaign promoted “incredible India” as the future global superpower of the twenty-first century, a country of unrestricted opportunities and achievement, with a citizenry proud of populist slogans such as “made in India” and “there is no better time to be an Indian” (Brosius 2010: 1). 31 BJP’s rise to political power in the 90s was “accompanied by the emergence of a new social group that was defined by an overlap of social and economic privileges” (Yadav 1999). This was the time when despite being an artefact of state led economic policies, both entrepreneurial as well as professional middle classes drifted away from the Congress, disenchanted with its continued rhetoric of a socialist and bureaucratized state. 32 Palshikar (2009: 10) has argued that the Congress made an attempt in the 90s to “redefine the social contract and forge a policy framework that depended only on

Middle Class Politics in India

153

the middle classes”, which implied “an exclusion of the poor from policy considerations”. 33 For the full text of the manifestos of the Congress party visit www.aicc.org.in/new/manifesto.doc (accessed on 1 August 2013); for complete texts of BJP manifestos visit ibnlive.in.com/news/full...bjp-manifesto.../8940437.html and http:/www.bjp/org// (accessed on 3 August 2013). 34 BJP manifesto released by Modi for 2012 Assembly elections in Gujarat specifically focused on the issues of what it termed the “neo-middle class”: www.deccanherald.com (accessed on 28 January 2013). 35 Equally significantly, the two coalition maker parties at the centre have not tampered much with the anti-market policies like caste/community based reservations in the public sector and centrally funded institutions of higher learning and budgetary subsidies for “non-merit” goods and services. The aim is not to unduly annoy the recipient “plebeian” segment of the “new” middle class that remains intrinsically linked to/dependent on state sector (Bardhan 2005: 4996). 36 In comparison, the rural segment of the new middle class leading the numerically strong middle/lower castes and also having their own state/regional parties have been far more successful in capturing/sharing political power at the state level (Kumar 2013). 37 In what can be termed a “classic example of the democratic upsurge levelling off”, the NES’ 2009 survey data revealed a “‘slight increase” in the turnout among middle class as well as upper class voters when compared to the corresponding figures in the 1996, 1999, and 2004 surveys (Kumar 2009: 50). 38 Referring to Gramsci, Deshpande argues that the middle class undertakes the task of building hegemony. The elite fraction of the middle class specializes in the production of ideologies whereas its mass fraction “engages in the exemplary consumption of ideologies thus investing them with social legitimacy” (Deshpande 2003: 141). 39 “Apathy/disinterest” among the middle class electorates from party politics is evidenced in the sociological composition of the voters in the NES data (Alam 2004: 26–44; Kumar 2009: 48). Underlining the divergence between attitudes ot democratic politics and actual electoral participation among the middle classes, a KAS-commissioned CSDS-Lokniti study revealed that while middle class youth with a higher level of education are more likely to say that it is a citizen’s duty to vote during elections, their actual electoral participation is less than that of middle class youth with lower levels of education (de Souza, Kumar, and Shastri 2009). 40 The middle class hold over civil society is reflected in the fact that it increasingly “speaks with an urban, middle class accent, and its language is generally English” (Harriss 2010: 150; Jayal 2009: 154). 41 Besides the electoral success of AAP that shocked the mainstream parties, another factor that hastened the legislative process was yet another indefinite fast undertaken by Anna Hazare. 42 “The politics of aam adami does not include the poor or their concerns. It is a politics of and by the middle classes, and it signifies a sea change in the cultural and political life of independent India” (Baviskar and Ray 2011: 2). 43 www.aamaadmiparty.org/Manifesto-for-Delhi accessed on 31 January 2014.

154

Chapter Eight

*Acknowledgment: I thank Bhupinder Brar, E. Sridharan and Ajay Mehra for their comments on some of the arguments presented here and also Khusbu Mahajan and Jyoti Mishra for providing research assistance. A few interviews conducted along with Ajay Gudavarthy in Delhi in the month of January 2014 helped in having a limited but very helpful “field view” about AAP politics. Thanks are also due to Sanjay Kumar for permission and cooperation in using the CSDS-NES survey data of 2004 and 2009.)

References Ahmad, Imtiaz and Reifeld, Helmut (eds). 2002. Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe, Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan. Alam, Javeed. 2004. Who Wants Democracy?, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. Alavi, Hamza. 1972. “The State in Post-Colonial Societies”, New Left Review, 74, (July-August), pp. 59–81. Bardhan, Pranab. 1989. “The Third Dominant Class”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXIV, No. 3 (21 January), pp. 155–156. —. 1999. Political Economy of Development in India, Delhi: Oxford University Press. —. 2005. “Nature of Opposition to Economic Reforms in India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XL, No. 48 (26 November), pp. 4995–4998. Baviskar, Amita and Raka Ray (eds). 2011. Elite and Every Man. New Delhi: Routledge. Beinhocker, Eric D., Diana Farrell and Adil S Zainulbhai. 2007. “Tracking the Growth of India’s Middle Class”, McKinsey Quarterly (August). Beteille, Andre. 1989. “Are the Intelligentsia a Ruling Class”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXIV, No. 3 (21 January), pp. 151–155. —. 2001. “The Social Character of the Indian Middle Class”, in Imtiaz Ahmed and Helmut Reifeld (eds), Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe, Delhi: Social Science Press. —. 2007. “Classes and Communities”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLII, No. 11, pp. 945–952. Bhatt, Chetan. 2006. “Democracy and Hindu Nationalism”, in John Anderson (ed.), Religion, Democracy and Democratization, London: Routledge. Brosius, Christiane. 2010. India’s Middle Class: New Forms of Urban Leisure, Consumption and Prosperity, New Delhi: Routledge.

Middle Class Politics in India

155

Chandrasekhar, C.P. 2011. “Notes on Neo-liberalism and the Future of the Left”, Social Scientist, Vol. 39, No. 1–2, pp. 20–34. Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Das, Gurcharan. 2002. India Unbound: From Independence to the Global Information Age, New Delhi: Penguin. Deshpande, Satish. 2003. Contemporary India: A Sociological View, New Delhi: Penguin. De Souza, Peter, Sanjay Kumar and Sandeep Shastri. 2009. Indian Youth in a Transforming World: Attitudes and Perceptions, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Fernandes, Leela and P. Heller. 2006. “Hegemonic Aspirations: New Middle Class Politics and India’s Democracy in Comparative Perspective”, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 4. Fernandes, Leela. 2007. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reforms, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ghosh, Biswajit. 2011. “Cultural Changes and Challenges in the Era of Globalization: The Case of India”, Journal of Developing Societies, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 153–175. Gupta, Dipankar. 2008. “The Middle Class Myth in India”, The Times of India (4 March); http://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/the-middle-classmyth-in-india/accessed on 3 February 2014. Hansen, Thomas Blom. 1999. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Harriss, John. 2010. “Class and Politics”, in Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (eds), The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 139–153. Harriss-White, Barbara. 2003. India Working: Papers on Society and Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haynes, Douglas, Abigail McGowan, Trthankar Roy and Haruka Yanagisawa. 2010. Towards a History in South Asia, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hawley, John Stratton. 2001. “Modern India and the Question of Middle Class Religion”, International Journal of Hindu Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 217–225. Jaffrelot, Christophe and Peter van der Veer. 2008. “Introduction”, in Christophe Jaffrelot and Peter van der Veer (eds), Patterns of Middle Class Consumption in India and China, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Jayal, Niraja Gopal (ed.). 2001. Democracy in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

156

Chapter Eight

—. 2009. “The Role of Civil Society”, in Sumit Ganguly, Larry Diamond, and Marc F. Plattner (eds), The State of India’s Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Jodhka, Surinder S., Loren R Demerath and N. J. Demerath III. 2006. “Interrogating Caste and Religion in India’s Emerging Middle Class”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLI, No. 35 (2 September), p. 1535. Joshi, Sanjay. 2001. Fractured Modernity: Making of a Middle Class in Colonial North India, Delhi: Oxford University Press. —. (ed.). 2010. “Introduction”, in The Middle Class in Colonial India, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kapur, Devesh. 2002. “The Causes and Consequences of India’s IT Boom”, India Review, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 91–110 available at http://gseinhyderabad.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/indias_it.pdf accessed on 3 February 2014. —. 2010. “The Middle Class in India: A Social Formation or Political Actor”, in Julian Go (ed.), Political Power and Social Theory, New Delhi: National Council for Applied Economic Research. Kaviraj, Sudipta.1986. “Indira Gandhi and Indian Politics”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XXI, No. 38–39 (20 September), pp. 1697– 1708. Kejriwal, Arvind. 2012. Swaraj, New Delhi: HarperCollins. Khilnani, Sunil. 1997. The Idea of India, London: Hamish Hamilton. Kumar, Ashutosh. 2009. “Disconnect between Economic Reforms and Electoral Democracy in India”, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 719–739. —. 2011. “India against Corruption”, Seminar, 626, October, pp. 61-62. —. 2013. “Middle Classes, Parties and Electoral Politics in India”, in Ajay K. Mehra (ed.), Party System in India: Emerging Trajectories, New Delhi: Lancer, pp. 132–158. Kumar, Krishna. 2011. “Cleansing the State”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 46, No. 48, pp. 14–17. Kumar, Sanjay. 2009. “Patterns of Political Participation: Trends and Perspective”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV, No. 39, pp. 47-51. Mathur, Nita. 2010. “Shopping Malls, Credit Cards and Global Brands: Consumer Culture and Life Styles of India’s New Middle Class”, South Asia Research, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 211–231. Misra, B.B. 1961. The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Middle Class Politics in India

157

Nandy, Ashis. 1995. “An Intelligent Critics Guide to Indian Cinema”, in The Savage Freud and Other Papers on Possible and Retrievable Selves, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Nehru, Jawaharlal. (1946) 1998. The Discovery of India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Palshikar, Suhas. 2009. “Tentative Emergence of a New and Tentative Coalition?”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 21 (23 May), pp. 8–10. Patel, Aakar. 2011. “The New Middle Class”, Seminar, 618 (February). Rajagopal, Arvind. 2011. “The Emergency as Prehistory of the New Indian Middle Class”, Modern Asian Studies, Cambridge University Journal Online. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayfulltext? type=6&fid=8…. Accessed 9 May 2011. Ravallion, Martin. 2009. “The Developing World’s Bulging (but Vulnerable) ‘Middle Class’”, Policy Research Working Paper, 4816, The World Bank Development Research Group Online. http://econ.worldbank.org. Accessed on 10 June 2013. Rudra, Ashok. 1989. “The Emergence of the Intelligentsia as a Ruling Class in India”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 24, No. 3 (21 January), pp. 142–150. Saavala, Minna. 2010. Middle Class Moralities: Everyday Struggles Over Belongiings and Prestige in India, Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan. Sanghvi, Veer. 2005. “Two Indias”, Seminar (February). Saxena, Rachna. 2010. “The Middle Class in India: Issues and Opportunities”, in Deutsche Bank Research (15 February). Sheth, D.L. 1999. “Secularisation of Caste and the Making of New Middle Class”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 35 (21 August), pp. 2502–2510. —. 2009. “Political Communalisation of Religions and the Crisis of Secularism”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 39, pp.71– 79. Shukla, Rajesh. 2009. “Why does the Middle Class Matter?”, The Economic Times (27 April). Sinha, Aseema. 2009. “Economic Growth and Political Accommodation”, in Sumit Ganguli, Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner (eds.), The State of India’s Democracy, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sitapati, Vinay. 2011. “What Anan Hazare’s Movement and Indian New Middle Class Say about Each Other”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 47, No. 30, pp. 39–44.

158

Chapter Eight

Sridharan, E. 2004. “The Growth and Sectoral Composition of India’s Middle Class: Its Impact on the Politics of Economic Liberalization”, India Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 405–428. Srinivas, M. N. 1966. Social Change in Modern India, New Delhi: Orient Longman. Tharoor. 2005. “Who is this Middle Class”, The Hindu (22 May), Editorial. Trentmann, Frank. 2010. “Tiny Middle Class, Huge Moral Anxieties”, in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 45, No. 29 (17 July), pp. 35–37. Vanaik, Achin. 1990. The Painful Transition: Bourgeois Democracy in India, London: Verso. Varma, Pavan K. 2007. The Great Middle Class. Delhi: Penguin India. —. 2010. Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity, London: Allen Lane. Yadav, Yogendra.1999. “Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India’s Third Electoral System, 1989–99”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 34–35, pp. 2393–2399. Yadav, Yogendra, Sanjay Kumar and Oliver Heath. 1999. “Election Analysis: The BJP’s New Social Block: An Analysis by CSDS based on the Electoral Outcome and the Findings of a Nation-Wide PostElection Survey”, Frontline, Vol. 16, No. 23. Yadav, Yogendra and Suhas Palshikar. 2009. “Between Fortuna and Virtu: Explaining the Congress Ambiguous Victory in 2009”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. XLIV, No. 39 (26 November), pp. 33–46.

PART 3: LOCATING THE INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS IN REGIONAL, URBAN, AND RURAL SCENARIOS

CHAPTER NINE AFTER HEGEMONY: THE BENGALI MIDDLE CLASS SUMIT HOWLADAR

Introduction The formation of the Bengali middle class has been one of the most interesting and significant events in the history of the colonial rule in the country. The very necessity of administration compelled the British to form a certain group of people who would be acting as the mediators between the colonial rulers and the native subjects. With the introduction of the “Macaulay Minute” and the subsequent ushering in of a new educational policy, there was the initiation of a process of class formation which subsequently came to be known as the bhadralok (middle class, gentlemen) class. With English education as their primary capital, this class came to play a very important role in the political and societal arena.

The formative years With the passing of time, this middle class faced many challenges and as an entity underwent modifications, but the overall dynamics and their role in influencing the social and political trajectory remained unchallenged for a long time to come. This class was trying to assimilate the colonial notions and styles with that of the indigenous ways of life which often proved problematic. Although the formation of this middle class was based on the colonial set of ideas, yet this class was not fully able to assimilate with the colonial scheme of affairs (especially with the concept of chakri (service)). They were trying to bring about a balance between their professional and personal lives which is where religious leaders like Ramakrishna Paramhansa played a crucial role. According to Sumit Sarkar, Ramakrishna provided this particular set of professionals a particular space of bhakti or devotion where they could retreat even while

After Hegemony: The Bengali Middle Class

161

following the alien set of rules and regulations at the office. This bhadralok class was not entirely a homogeneous group; there was also the presence of people from the lower castes. The space of bhakti which was provided by Ramakrishna was open to this group of people also but with a certain condition of which Sarkar writes: [S]ubalternity is privileged – provided, of course, it remains properly subaltern. The humble constitute the ideal bhaktas. Bhakti and tantra, the two forms of religious practice repeatedly declared to be appropriate for Kaliyuga, are both explicitly open to women and Shudras, distinct to Brahminical learning and ritual. (Sarkar 1997: 312)

What is apparent from the above statement is that the line of demarcation between the various castes did not vanish with the introduction of the colonial project; rather they got refashioned to fit the new set of conditions. From the very formative years, the Bengali bhadralok class seemed to have no reservations regarding the continuance of the colonial government and the allied educational reforms which of course were favourable for the maintenance of their hegemony. Any modifications brought in by the government which challenged this hegemony were resisted by this middle class. The second half of the nineteenth century is remarkable for the vocal resistance put forward by the Bengali bhadralok against changing the course of educational development sset out by their guru Macaulay (Acharya 1995: 670). Rajendralal Mitra, a renowned scholar of the time, voiced the true sentiment of the bhadralok in this regard in his address at the meeting to protest against the policy of Governor General Mayo and Lieutenant Governor George Campbell held at the town hall of Calcutta on 2 July 1870. He said: No Hindu in Bengal would for a moment wish to see our present government changed. On the whole India never had a government so good in the whole course of her history, and if the government is to last the necessity for learning English will always continue, even after Bengali is rendered as perfect as the English. (Acharya 1995: 673)

It is apparent that the Bengali bhadralok from its inception acquired a hegemonic character which was strengthened later on.

162

Chapter Nine

The Beginning of Dalit Assertion Shekhar Bandyopadhyay has rightly pointed out that the Dalit assertion movement in Bengal, which started in the 1870s, had the Rajbansis and the Namasudras at the forefront. For both their close geographical proximity was a major factor in their successful social mobilization and, significantly, both lost their geographical anchorage as a result of Partition (Bandyopadhyay 2009: 457). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the notion of education as a capital which was the defining factor in the formation of the upper caste Hindu bhadralok society seems to have taken root in the Namasudras also. As far as the reclaiming of political and social rights and privileges is concerned, this led to division, with the educated leadership adopting constitutional means of assertion whereas the less educated or uneducated section emerging out of the Matua sect did not do so. East Bengali society was divided into several layers where interestingly we find co-operation within different classes of the Hindus and the Muslims. In their struggle against upper caste domination, the natural allies of the untouchables were the Muslims who shared many common interests with them (Dasgupta 2000: 445). The Bengali bhadralok’s urge to maintain hegemony was overtly expressed when they created a huge uproar against the scheme of reservation of seats for the scheduled castes under the Poona Pact. Some high caste politicians asked the Bengal Governor to revoke provisions pertaining to reservation of seats in the state legislature for the scheduled castes as they argued that there was no caste in Bengal that was in a depressed political situation (Chatterji 1995: 12, 191). Even in the pre-independence phase we find the deployment of modern idioms of social justice in the form of the communist led sharecroppers’ movement known as the Tebhaga movement which began in 1946. This particular movement brought into the open the divisions between the Rajbansi jotedars (large land-holding peasants) and the Rajbansi adhiars (sharecroppers).

Engaging with Partition The idea of class had come to play a very significant role in determining societal relations. It is this very notion of class along with a sense of antagonism towards a particular religion which was strategically played by the upper caste Bhadraloks in the post independence period. There was a mobilization and deployment of certain so called modern idioms of social justice in the state by the Left forces. Outwardly this

After Hegemony: The Bengali Middle Class

163

particular stance had a pseudo though powerful liberal element attached to it. The effect of this was that there was a successful effort on the part of these forces to restructure the idioms of victimhood which placed more emphasis on the issue of displacement and the incumbent trauma and struggles attached with it rather than on caste. In this scenario class and religious discourse occupied the dominant position whereas the problem of caste was subsumed. The very efficiency with which the upper caste Hindu Bhadralok class had negotiated with the various factors surrounding partition is a prominent indicator of their societal and political dominance. They were able to divide the opinion of the Dalit section regarding the issue of partition. The memories of violence and the experiences of displacement among Namasudra peasants seem to have altered their political outlook and perceptions of their community; they too began to look at themselves as an uprooted minority, violated by the Muslim “other” (Bandyopadhyay 2009: 460). Caste mattered less in Bengal at this juncture (ibid.). The Namasudra community which was once a tight-knit geographically integrated peasant community was dispersed. Although on the surface it was class and religion which occupied the central position in the state of affairs, underneath it actually heralded a process where the caste position was solidified (positively for the bhadralok). In the post-Independence phase the absence of an environment allowing Dalit assertion was favourable for the continuance of the middle class bhadralok hegemony. In the early days of freedom, the dominant voice of the nation silenced all minority voices from the margins, giving the appearance that the caste question had already been resolved in Bengal (Bandyopadhyay 2009: 463). Precisely this was also the time which saw the communist leaders (upper caste Hindus) acting as mediators. The factor which contributed to this end was the Congress and the Hindutva forces playing a thankless and self-destructive game of “same side goal” (see Sinha 2013 for details). The refugees responded favourably to the communists and provided a stable constituency for them. It is also important to recognize that Dalit identity politics in Bengal cannot be wholly understood if reduced to oppositional narratives of resistance (Bandyopadhyay 2009: 456). In fact, the Dalits of Bengal adopted varied strategies of survival and negotiation in their engagement with hierarchies of power at different historical junctures (ibid.). Bengal had been a rigidly caste-based society with a socioeconomic hierarchy that was headed by a Hindu, elite bourgeoisie, itself a product of the colonial era. Many members of this elite society had played a major role in the nationalist movement and had hoped to dominate society after the British left (Sanyal 2009: 69). The partition of India shattered this

164

Chapter Nine

hope. The question of honour became an important issue in the exodus of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan to India. This was not only limited to the question of women’s honour, but also applied to the question of status within society (Sanyal 2009: 68). In fact, the first wave of refugees from East Bengal was mainly composed of members from the upper-caste Hindu society who were economically and educationally better off (Chakrabarti 1999: 7). The East Bengali Hindu middle classes saw themselves as emancipators of the new Indian state and saw the promises doled out by the Indian leadership of protection not as charity or compassion but as an obligation (Sanyal 2009: 79). Moreover, the class and caste position, coupled with their educated background and previous employment, placed these individuals as part of the bhadralok or genteel society. The aspiration towards becoming part of Calcutta’s urbane, genteel or bhadralok culture has much to do with regaining dignity and self-respect among the East Bengali refugees (ibid.). The city that presents itself as bhadralok or “gentlemanly” in this case allows only its bhadralok classes to speak for it. All others are cast as subalterns who can only be spoken for through the voices of the babus (bureaucrats). Thus, those who had the experience of “speaking for” another, in this case East Bengali upper-caste Hindus suddenly found themselves being spoken for by those who now positioned themselves as their hosts (West Bengali, upper-caste Hindus). Thus it was essential for them to cast aside their refugee identity to gain a foothold in the city. With the huge influx of uprooted refugees from East Pakistan to Calcutta and its suburbs it was soon apparent that the urban bhadralok is going to be an indispensable factor for all the political parties including those for radical change. Partha Chatterjee has rightly said that “when battle lines have been drawn, the upper caste intelligentsia were to be found in leading roles in every contending party – the ruling party and the party of the opposition, parties of status quo and parties of change” (Chatterjee 1997: 81). Thus we see that the class position of the earlier refugees had much to do with their success in settling into the country which was not the case for those who came later and were from lower caste and class backgrounds. Hereafter the bhadralok middle class acquired a completely hegemonic character. The mid-sixties saw an upsurge in Left forces in the state and also the formation of the United Front government in 1967, which took up the land issue. Hare Krishna Konar was the chief architect of the land reforms programme which though could not progress much due to the politically unstable (and again bhadralok dominated) rule of the Congress led government from 1972 till 1977. But the notable factor here is that the Left

After Hegemony: The Bengali Middle Class

165

political parties were able to highlight the land reforms programme as a successful alternative strategy which made them popular among the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes and in the process strengthened their hold.

Left Front and Bhadralok Hegemony With the coming of the Left to power, the land reforms programme was revived albeit in a reformulated way which culminated in the form of Operation Barga. The very land reforms programme which the Left had initiated in a forceful manner contributed in the exhibition and strengthening of the pseudo modern-secular idiom deployed by them, which forced the primordial loyalties to give way to loyalties based on class solidarity. The struggle against exploiting classes had shaken the vertical unity of castes in West Bengal (Dasgupta 2000: 455). The policy adopted by the Left forces served two very important ends. First, as far as the land issue was concerned the Left was able to weaken the consolidated caste identities. To a large extent they did away with the zamindari (land holding) system and in its place (through a faulty redistribution mechanism) established a middle class landowning class which in the course of time attained the same hegemonic characteristics of the earlier class with the help and patronage of the Left. The entire land reform programme undertaken by the Left (which represented the state) seemed to be of a compensatory nature coupled with the idea of pragmatism which resulted in moral loss of the lower castes (which represented the victim) at some level. Once compensated in kind, the victim tends to forgo the moral claim to criticize either the government or the tormentor, and justice as a transcendental good gets regressively converted into an instrumental good (Guru 2010: 369). Secondly, the very act of patronage by the Left resulted in decentralization of power and the so called empowerment of the panchayats where the reins of power remained in the hands of this particular middle class land owning class. The overall impact of this was that the bhadralok Left was able to consolidate its hold on different sections of society and at the same time appear to be working for the poor whilst marginalizing the Dalit movement in the state. The interesting thing to note here is that though in the rural areas the scheduled castes in some cases (as a token gesture) emerged as the new political leaders, at the district and state levels it was the bhadralok politicians who continued to dominate the scene. Theoretically speaking, the marginalized are supposed to set the social justice agenda and through different levels of intervention activate the state in favour of this agenda (Guru 2010: 361). But in actual

166

Chapter Nine

practice, it is the state that not only gains complete control of the social justice agenda but does so by reducing the marginalized to a passive recipient of social justice (ibid.). This is exactly what has happened in West Bengal under the Left Front regime. The bhadralok dominated Left interpreted the caste system in the orthodox Marxian manner (for obvious reasons) whereby it was either non-existent or was not an issue attracting considerable attention. This was evident also in its stand on reservation after the publication of the Mandal Commission Report in 1980. The Left also did not appoint ideal scheduled caste candidates for party tickets to constituencies reserved for scheduled castes. As a result, with a few exceptions, the chosen candidates tended to be those most subservient to the party leadership and least likely to press their own community interests (Mallick 1993: 1071). An environment was created where caste assertion became impossible. On the other hand, the absence of caste articulation of political demands does not mean that caste authority and caste linkages have not proved useful to different political parties as instruments for gathering electoral support in the relatively unmobilized areas (Chatterjee 1997: 82). But the considerable fragmentation among the middle castes, and the overall dominance of culture and thought of the urban intelligentsia, has prevented any successful aggregation of caste interests in state elections (ibid.). The Left Front government has been a symbol of Brahminical supremacy and tyranny in the name of Marxism; the Sachhar Committee Report and incidents like Singur and Nandigram are glaring examples.

The Trinamool Congress and Bhadralok’s Loosening Grip With the coming of the Trinamool Congress to power in West Bengal in 2011, there has been a lot of talk about the breakdown of the uppercaste dominance of politics and the simultaneous rise of the subalterns and other under-privileged castes. This has been true to a large extent with the Trinamool’s alliances with a lot of these groups. The lack of the Left’s creative imagination in understanding the dynamics and constitutive character of the people led to its failure to comprehend that marginalized identity groups like Dalits, tribals, Muslims, etc. also constitute the people. This very concept of “people” seems to be changing with the advent of the Trinamool. Now “caste . . . has asserted itself as a determinant category in the present electoral politics of West Bengal” (Sinharay 2012: 26). The hegemonic domination of the modern liberal bhadralok over the public life of Bengal has now been fractured with the dramatic entry of the lower caste Matuas as a major vote conglomerate (ibid).

After Hegemony: The Bengali Middle Class

167

Interestingly in this new phase of identity-cum-assertive politics led by the Trinamool Congress, one of the fields which are being targeted with the motive of remodification and restructuring is films, the cultural epicentre of bhadralok cultural dominance. The silver screen of the sixties and seventies was dominated by the famous pair of Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. Uttam Kumar symbolized the bhadrata (gentlemanliness) that characterized the Bengali middle class. During the eighties with the death of Uttam Kumar the bhadra ethos receded from Bengali cinema and was replaced by a doubtful kind of cosmopolitanism. But with the advent of the liberalization period, the Bengali film industry gradually underwent significant changes whereby (for several reasons) the grip of the bhadralok middle class seems to be loosening. Primary among them has been the inability of the state government to fund films which were in consonance with the bhadralok taste and mannerism. This has been replaced by the private production houses (one prominent example is Sri Venkatesh Films) who have adopted a unique business model of vertical integration, the implication of which is severe monopoly and control of the productiondistribution-exhibition system, resulting in excessive control over the industry. This in turn has resulted in redefining and overhauling the entire contours of bhadralok cinema whereby “class” cinema is drawing the masses and “mainstream” is becoming classy. There is the rise of a middle-of-the-road cinema that both in form and content relies heavily on style and look. The central question to be asked here is whether that same bhadralok class exists today. The reason for raising this question is that it has served as one of the crucial background reasons behind the significant changes which have come about. The territory of the image is giving in to unfamiliar people seeking entry. Those who find it wholly unacceptable are likely to turn away from all politics. But signs are clear that the minority culture of distinction has opened its doors to other semiotic neighbourhoods and has even become dependent on the invasions for survival (Biswas 2008: 205). The stark and rigid division between the Bengali middle class intelligentsia’s “bhadralok cinema” or “good cinema” and the mainstream commercial cinema seems to be diminishing. It appears the parallels are converging and the exclusive bhadralok hegemony is eroding. The question is no more of “class” but of “aesthetics” which is no longer the exclusive capital of a particular class. In the emerging multimedia universe, the space for expression has expanded and grown more democratic though complex. A consequence of the Left stranglehold was the state’s insulation from both national and global developments and cinema was no exception to

168

Chapter Nine

this. The contemporary Bengali film industry seems to be trying to put an end to this insulation. The perception of the term “Bengali” has metamorphosed to mean something much wider than what it meant ten years ago. The films have come out of the confines of the middle-class home and are capturing the city and its heterogeneous population inside out. They are conforming to neo-liberalism with the depiction and portrayal of the uncharted (though craved for) consumerist aspirations and fantasies. One of the prominent signifiers of the earlier bhadralok films was the content narrative. But today’s films have moved from contentoriented to form-oriented narrative, thereby breaking the bhadralok hegemony in a certain way. Interestingly this seems to be in consonance with the political narrative of Mamata. What we are witnessing today is an effort “at the convergence of politics with a kind of cultural production in Bengal” (Biswas 2008: 201). This is also evident in the inaugural session of the recently concluded Kolkata Film Festival where popular movie stars from different regions shared the dais along with the Chief Minister. Thus we see that the incumbent government is trying to create a new set of bhadralok population whose tastes are characterized by the neoliberal agenda, starkly different from that of the leftist bhadraloks and more in consonance with the populist programmatic Trinamool politics. There is an attempt on the part of Mamata to redefine and renegotiate the contours of culture and in the process break the Left Bengali middle class (bhadralok) hegemony. The wide popularity and reach of cinema makes it a favourite medium for achieving that goal.

Conclusion Though outwardly it seems that politics has been dominated by the secular idea of class, the mental world of the Bengali middle class is still not free from the idea of a status based on the concepts of caste and endogamy. The economic, social, and political power still remains in the hands of upper and middle ranking castes. The making of upper caste Hindu middle class domination in West Bengal was by no means a process the bhadralok stumbled upon through sheer circumstance and structural constraint; instead it was a conscious pragmatic process. The Dalit quandary in West Bengal is the outcome of the struggle with the political will of the upper caste Hindu middle class. This subject is diffuse and amorphous but interestingly very effective in its production of social and material inequalities. It remains to be seen whether the Mamata led Trinamool government is interested and able to chart out a new path where

After Hegemony: The Bengali Middle Class

169

the middle class hegemony can be broken or whether it follows the already traversed path albeit with certain cosmetic modifications.

References Acharya, Poromesh. 1995. “Bengali ‘Bhadralok’ and Educational Development in 19th Century Bengal”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 13, pp. 670–673. Bandyopadhyay, Sekhar. 2009. “Partition and the Ruptures in Dalit Identity Politics in Bengal”, Asian Studies Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 455–467. Biswas, Moinak. 2008. Changing Scenes, www.sarai.net/publications/readers/08-fear/196-206-moinakbiswas.pdf (accessed 4 November 2013). Chakrabarti, P.K. 1999. The Marginal Men: The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal, Calcutta: Naya Udyog. Chatterjee, Partha. 1997. The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chatterji, Joya. 1995. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–47, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dasgupta, Abhijit. 2000. “In the Citadel of Bhadralok Politicians: The Scheduled Castes in West Bengal”, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy, Vol. 12, No. 3–4, pp. 445–458. Guru, Gopal. 2010. “Social Justice”, in Niraja Gopal Jayal and Pratap Bhanu Mehta (eds), The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 361–377. Mallik, Ross. 1993. Development Policy of a Communist Government: West Bengal since 1977, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sanyal, Romola. 2009. “Contesting Refugeehood: Squatting as Survival in Post-partition Calcutta”, Social Identities, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 67–84. Sarkar, Sumit. 1997. Writing Social History, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sinha, Dipankar. 2013. “‘Same Side Goal’ Politics: West Bengal’s New Brand Image?,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 48, No. 30, pp. 19–22. Sinharay, Praskanva. 2012. “A New Politics of Caste”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 47, No. 34, pp. 26–27.

CHAPTER TEN DEPEASANTIZATION, EMBOURGEOISEMENT, AND THE GROWTH OF THE RURAL MIDDLE CLASS SUPRIYA SINGH

In the initial phase, studies on rural India have largely been centred on caste, kinship, and traditions within a structural-functional perspective (Wiser 1936; Srinivas 1952; Dube 1955; Marriott 1955; Majumdar 1958; Chauhan 1967). Some of the studies have analysed the processes of change and mobility but mainly in terms of caste (Srinivas 1972). Little later, class and political dimensions of social mobility in villages have also been analysed using the Marxian and the Weberian frameworks (Mukherjee 1957; Desai 2005; Thorner and Thorner 1962; Beteille [1965] 2012). Those studies tried to identify classes in rural India. Mukherjee (1957) by analysing nine occupational categories has identified three classes in West Bengal villages. He explains the mobility in class structure in terms of political-economic factors and processes operating in the British economy as well as its interplay with colonial India. Desai’s ([1948] 2005) study explains the changes in the socio-economic bases of rural India owing to British rule and thereby identifies agrarian classes at a wider level. Attempting a macro level analysis of agrarian class structure, Thorner and Thorner (1962) classified the entire Indian agrarian population into Maliks (landlords), Kisans (cultivators) and Mazdoors (wage labours); they further subdivided each of the categories into subcategories. Beteille ([1965] 2012), in the Weberian framework, examining the bases of social stratifications at a micro level identifies three aspects of mobility– caste (social), class (economic), and power (political). Andre Beteille (2001) discussed the Indian middle class later, however, in the industrial-urban context. He does not pay any consideration to the changing features of the rural class structure under the influence of industrialization-urbanization. Neither of them envisages

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

171

a middle class in rural society. The point of departure for the present study is to take note of the emergence of a middle class similar to the urban middle class in villages, particularly in the neighbourhood of cities. One of the prominent features of contemporary Indian society is the rise and expansion of the middle classes (Beteille 2001; Misra 2004; Fernandes 2006). The middle class has been studied extensively but mostly in the industrial-urban context; analysis of the middle class in rural areas is scanty. The present paper emphasizes that not only the consumer middle class but the middle class on the pattern of the urban middle class has started evolving in rural areas. Generally the studies on the industrialurban middle classes focus at the macro level. The studies on Indian agrarian classes conducted by Mukherjee (1957) and Beteille ([1965] 2012) were micro attempts to have implications for the macro. Thorner and Thorner’s effort (1962) is to bring macro analysis to the micro level. For a refined scientific understanding, it is necessary to move from micro to macro and vice versa. In consonance with this logic, the present study attempts to identify and understand the rural middle class at a micro level with a view to developing an understanding of the macro. Accordingly, a study of two villages has been attempted to examine the nature and dynamics of the rural middle class. The ever growing urban expansion and the penetration of the capitalist industrial economy have unleashed many processes of change in villages, particularly those near big cities and highways. As a consequence of land that is either acquisitioned or voluntarily sold, the rural areas, undergoing socioeconomic change, are sometimes ridden with contradictions. Soni (2009) considers the exploitative nature of urban domination over agrarian peripheries as a new colonialism of the urban rich. Lobo & Kumar (2009) emphasize that though land acquisition in Gujarat has led to facilities for villagers such as education, health, drinking water, etc., it has at the same time created problems such as water scarcity, unemployment, and an exploitative market. Concomitantly the processes of social mobility such as embourgeoisement and depeasantization have also advanced. Aspects of embourgeoisement along with processes and determinants of depeasantization have been studied (Goldthorpe et al. 1967; Andoh 2011; Singh 2012). It is argued that embourgeoisement is responsible for the rise and growth of the middle class. Depeasantization has also resulted in the growth of the middle class in villages besides the rural proletariat. The present study specifically deals with the effects of these two processes. The study attempts to locate a rural middle class in the aftermath of land transactions due to increasing urbanization and industrialization. In this context, the following issues are relevant for analysis: (i) the nature,

172

Chapter Ten

aspects, and dynamics of the rural middle class; (ii) depeasantization and the growth of the rural middle class; and (iii) economic, sociocultural and political embourgeoisement of the rural middle class.

Methods and Techniques Lucknow has been undergoing a process of urbanization like other metropolitan cities (Census 2011). Consequently a large chunk of land in nearby villages is being acquisitioned and/or being sold voluntarily for settlements/colonies and industries and to commercial and educational organizations. This has resulted in the incredible price rise of land. Moreover, Lucknow being the capital has become the centre of political, administrative, and economic activities and hence is growing very fast. Lucknow therefore can be considered appropriate for studying the impact of increased prices of land and subsequent consequences of affluence among peasants. Unlike the rural area of the National Capital Region, villages adjoining Lucknow are being assimilated into the city over a period of time providing enough scope for the study of an on-going process of mobility and change in social structure. There have been two types of land transactions near Lucknow: (a) through land acquisition, mainly by the government, for developing residences, and (b) voluntary sale of land by villagers mainly for financial gain. Lucknow, the capital city which is now a metropolis, is spreading quite fast on its peripheral areas and encroaching on adjoining fertile agricultural land of rural blocks. Lucknow city along with its cantonment area occupied only 50 sq. km. in 1950; in 2001, it was about 450 sq. km. During the last 13 years, i.e. between 1994–95 and 2007–08, the growth rate of land put to non-agricultural uses in the neighbouring rural areas of Lucknow metropolis were recorded at 45.1%. It was the least in Bakshi ka Talab Block at 21.5% (Jafri et al. 2011), making it a fit case for the study. Two multi-caste villages of the block have been selected for the study where villagers belonging to every caste have been selling land. 50 respondents have been purposely selected from varied castes. As the study was of a village and dealing with property, the qualitative method of research by means of intensive interviews was considered to be more appropriate. For the sake of validity, data has also been corroborated by observation and informal conversations with the villagers. The secondary data has also been collected from the Block office, the Statistical Diary of U. P. (2008), the village school and the Aanganbadi (kindergarten) records.

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

173

A Brief Profile of Two Villages Navikot Nandana is both a Rajasvgram and a Gram Panchayat village which is divided into two villages namely Kotava and Nandana, located 18 and 16 km respectively away from Lucknow. Kotava is historically older and more significant in population in comparison to Nandana, which is relatively small in population. Historically the formation of both the villages is interconnected. Thakurs of this area are Manpuri Chauhan who settled in these villages after defeating the Mughal Governor of Oudh (Majumdar 1958). Both are multi-caste villages with 16 resident castes. Kotava village was a centre of trade in earlier times and was in deep interaction with its neighbouring villages. The economy of both the villages is mainly dependent on multiple things such as agriculture, transport, and business. Table 10.1: The Villages at a Glance Description Total Families in the Village Total Population Upper Caste Families Middle Caste Families Lower Caste Families Muslim Families i. Male ii. Female Total Educated People Total Illiterate Teenage Girls (10–18 Years)

Nandana 221 1367 118 76 27 --714 653 936 431 120

Kotava 495 2735 38 201 130 24 825 801 1106 520 257

Source: Bal Vikas Seva Avam Pushtahar Nideshalay, U.P. Mahila Avam Bal Vikas Vibhag, ASHA Bahu and Anganbadi.

Depeasantization and the Growth of the Rural Middle Class In the village society, traditionally peasants have been considered as its characteristic feature, but because of urbanization and land transactions, villagers have not remained peasants either socio-culturally or economically. After selling their land, they are adopting middle class occupations and even if they have small plots of agricultural land they are

174

Chapter Ten

not interested in doing agriculture. Out of 50, 7 people have left their agricultural land as useless and many people who have a slightly larger portion at remote places do absentee agriculture by managing it with the help of others. Sharecropping has become a popular mode of cultivation after land transactions. Twenty-one people of different castes have given their agricultural land on sharecropping or contract to others, and thus they do not directly engage in agricultural activities themselves. This is also a kind of shift towards old middle class occupations. Some have their houses in the village but do not have agricultural land there; they are engaged in occupations other than agriculture though they may own land at far off places. After getting a huge amount of money, they are adopting a different lifestyle and culture, identical to the middle class. As many as 79% of rural households in 2002–03 possessed land of 1 hectare or less and about 32% possessed less than 0.002 hectares of land [NSS Report No. 493 (59/18.1/1)]. Due to an indiscriminate rise in the price of land even marginal farmers have undergone upward socioeconomic mobility after selling their small plots of land at high prices. After depeasantization, a shift in two directions can be seen: a few have become proletariat after losing all their agricultural land and source of livelihood. Out of 50 respondents who were interviewed 9 have become landless and 16 are left with no agricultural land in the village or have a small portion of land at far off places and are forced to adopt other occupations or work as daily wage labourers. On the other hand, some of them have joined middle class occupations after selling their agricultural land. They invest money in small businesses. Five respondents have started working as brokers or middlemen in the business of land exchange and six have opened shops which provide timber for house construction on hire. Three have rented their houses to employees of the companies dealing in agriculture. Hiring and driving taxis and cars for commercial purposes are on the increase in the village. In both the villages, there are 9 people who either drive four wheelers on their own or hire drivers from outside the village for operating taxi services for commercial purposes. Many people from both the villages are involved in plotting which has emerged as a new occupation in the area. Some parents send their sons to private builders working in the village so that they can acquire the business acumen of land transactions and building construction. Three people have turned their own agricultural land into commercial sites; they plot on their agricultural land and later sell it to others at high rates. This tendency shows that besides agriculture other new occupations are being adopted by the villagers and agriculture is becoming a redundant occupation. All these new occupations have

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

175

provided them enough scope to raise their social and economic status in the direction of the middle class. Figure 10.1: Depeasantization & Growth of the Rural Middle Class

Embourgeoisement and the Growth of the Rural Middle Class In contemporary rural India, the emerging middle class is manifested at three levels: social, political, and economic, which can be more distinctly observed in the economic, sociocultural, and political embourgeoisement of peasants.

Economic The newly found affluence among peasants means they gravitate towards middle class life style inducing not only economic but also social mobility. It is now commonplace for public discourse and scholarly writings to refer to the affluence of the middle class and to point to visible lifestyle shifts as evidence of this affluence (Fernandes 2006: 142). Unlike forced displacement of peasants due to urban expansion and land acquisition, voluntary selling of land by peasants in both the villages has enabled them to lead a better life and seek an alternative occupation using the money they get after selling their land. They are not like the peasants whose land was acquisitioned and who consequently lost their land in the

176

Chapter Ten

public interest and were unable to buy equivalent land elsewhere, forcing them to work as daily wage labourers (Soni 2009; Lobo & Kumar 2009). Peasants who have sold their land are now able to lead a better urban life with all modern facilities. Some low and middle caste people have sold their small plots of land at high rates and have purchased a bigger piece of land in another area, thereby enhancing their economic status. Out of 26 lower and middle caste people who were interviewed, 16 have bought more land at other places than they had earlier in the village. Consequently, the ownership of land is no longer a monopoly of the upper castes. This has also been changing the agrarian relations in the villages. Now some low and middle caste families have a middle class lifestyle and status. They spend money on constructing big houses with modern architectural designs and try to equip them with all facilities and they show their social status and honour by investing heavily in consumer goods and services. They have moved from the peasant class to the petty bourgeois; they have enough money to have all essential things and are capable of influencing the power structure of the village. It can be argued therefore that they are rising as a rural middle class. The process can appropriately be understood in terms of economic embourgeoisement.

Sociocultural patterns The development of the middle class has not solely been an economic process; its significance in social, political, and cultural spheres has also been remarkable (Misra 2010). The middle class sociocultural patterns and lifestyle have become a reference point for all classes including the rural populace. Their affluence has brought about changes in community life as now they are moving from folk culture to an urban middle class culture. There is explicitly observable change from a public/community to private lifestyle in day to day interactions. Women spend their leisure time watching TV rather than gossiping with their neighbours. These kinds of changes are also visible in some low caste families: women in their families do not visit fields frequently and some have stopped it totally. A change from traditional towards a modern pattern of dress among women and girls can also be observed. Modern clothes are getting more popular and they visit city markets to get the clothes of their choice and current fashion (Sharma 2009). Visits to Lucknow have increased manifold for educational purposes, shopping, and watching movies in malls. This has also been facilitated by their purchase of new four-wheelers. Seventeen out of 50 people said that they buy their clothes from Lucknow and only sometimes go to the local market. Sixteen people visit Lucknow frequently

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

177

to watch movies, have picnics, and go shopping in the malls. Though the number of such people is much less it nonetheless reflects the increasing attraction of adopting middle class values and lifestyle. All features of urban consumerism can be witnessed as homes have refrigerators, fans, coolers, colour/LCD TV, gas stoves, water tanks, washing machines, European style bathrooms, marble floors, and designer doors. Villagers spend on goods which are considered status symbols and in turn have induced conspicuous consumption. Brands like Red Chief, Bata, Levis, etc. are getting popular among affluent peasants. Out of 50, 47 people built new houses after getting money from the land they had sold. Many of them constructed their houses only after consulting an architect and some of them even hired contractors from the city to make them like middle class homes. Also, the way of welcoming guests is becoming increasingly urban. The newly built houses of the village are like city houses with channel gates and boundary walls, unlike the earlier ones which were open enough for free entry of neighbours. This in turn has lessened interaction and communication among neighbours. Now their visits to each other are less frequent. Out of 50, 37 people accepted that they feel hesitant in visiting their neighbours without any work. This is now well accepted. Many respondents said that they were too busy to have any extra time to gossip with neighbours; rather, they like to spend their free time with family members. A few of them have even built shops adjoining their houses on the pattern of Indian town houses. The house structure is getting planned and modified and especially like houses in the market areas of towns. Villagers compete with each other in buying luxury vehicles. One can find the latest models and brands of cars such as Ford, Icon, Tata Indigo CS, Hyundai I-10, Mahindra Zylo, and Toyota Innova parked in front of multi-storey houses. Out of 50, 37 people have bought motorcycles or cars after selling their land. Some have bought scooters for their daughters to go to college. Village people, including some low caste families, have started sending their children to English medium schools by paying higher fees and by school vans. After selling off their land, 18 people out of 50 changed the school of their children from the Hindi medium to English and from the government schools to private schools. They even send their children outside the village for better education just like the educated middle class. The number of girls pursuing higher education has increased. People are now willing to send their girls outside for higher education. There is a case where the girl was sent outside of the province to get medical education in a college where large amount of donations are required. It all shows that they are spending on education of their children

178

Chapter Ten

like the urban middle class. This is an example of reference group behaviour and thereby embourgeoisement. The individualistic values, rights, and privacy are being emphasized. Parents want to live independently and separate from their offspring. Many people have constructed separate houses both for themselves and their independent adult offspring and many low caste families who could not afford separate houses have reserved separate portions and rooms in the houses. Out of 50, 32 people started living in nuclear families after selling their agricultural land. The land had kept them together; the selling of it has weakened the personal ties between parents and children resulting in nuclear families. This is again a shift to middle class culture from folk culture. This was a different finding in comparison to the study of the wealthy workers of Britain (Goldthorpe et al. 1967). Workers of Britain did not prefer middle class norms and culture, but the wealthy villagers in India are undergoing a process of embourgeoisement. They are shifting from community to individualistic behaviour patterns and becoming bourgeois in comparison to British affluent workers. The embourgeoisement is leading the erstwhile peasants into a middle class. Figure 10.2: Embourgeoisement and Growth of the Rural Middle Class

Fernandes (2006) argues that recent political trends have demonstrated that the political responses of the middle class have played an important role in shaping the direction of contemporary Indian politics. In rural areas also the emerging middle class is becoming more active politically, though its political culture and participation is more localized and caste based, having repercussions on local as well as regional politics. The 1993 elections to Delhi’s first assembly also brought ample evidence that the new non-agricultural, rural elite of outer Delhi had arrived as a political force (Soni 2009: 311). In both villages political awareness and participation have increased. They work for different parties, attend their meetings and have good relations with political leaders/workers. Many people in the village use their money to get the political favour of the local party men to settle their disputes. Seven people accepted that they grease the palms of influential people to get their work done. This has increased

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

179

the number of conflicts at the village level because now people can afford the expense of litigation. Those disputes which used to be settled by mutual consent are now dragged to a higher level with the power of money. In the villages, the new rich pursue caste politics corresponding to state trends. Out of 50, 25 respondents were from upper castes, mainly Kshatriyas and a few Brahmins. Fifteen of them support and cast their vote in favour of the BJP, 2 in favour Congress, 3 SP and only one supports the BSP. Six persons accepted that they keep changing their support for a particular party on the basis of who is contesting for election, which party is influential and has greater chances to win, or which party has done developmental work in the area. In 15 middle caste respondents only 1 supported the BJP, 2 the BSP, and 10 the SP, and the majority of them belonged to the Yadav caste. There was no supporter for the Congress in the middle castes. Out of 10 lower caste people 6 supported the BSP, 3 the SP, 1 the Congress and none of them supported the BJP. Figure 10.3: Political Choices of Affluent Voters

Peasants This shows that caste is still an important factor in determining the political support in the rural middle class and affluence has done little to erode the caste basis of politics. Fernandes (2006) cites some analysts (Palshikar 2001) noting that middle class voting patterns since the 1990s show a trend toward the BJP. The BJP has consistently received a higher share of upper caste middle class support. This also seems to be true in the case of both these villages. On the other hand, Soni (2009) in her study points out the shift of the support from the Congress to the BJP in outer Delhi. It is a reflection of the rising aspirations of this new urbanized elite, ready now for a bigger role and no longer willing to play second fiddle to

180

Chapter Ten

the established power hierarchy of the Congress party. Goldthorpe et al. (1967) in their study also find that there exists no simple relationship between affluence and vote. Though it may be considered that political uncertainty is a characteristic feature of the peasants, middle class political behaviour nonetheless is also generally uncertain.

The Nature and Dynamics of the Emerging Rural Middle Class An analysis of the politics of internal differentiations of caste, language, and urban/rural cultural styles provides an important cautionary note against any tendency to assume that the middle class is associated with a homogeneous form of identity and politics (Fernandes 2006: 180). In this context, the emerging rural middle class also has some distinct features, though it strongly corresponds with the old urban middle class. In the Marxian framework the two middle classes – old and new – are logically distinguished (Misra 2004: 250). The old middle class mainly comprises small businessmen, shopkeepers, petty contractors, selfemployed, small farmers, and peasants, and the new one consists of managers, technocrats, professionals, computer experts, engineers, scientists, educators, and white collar workers (Misra 2010). The middle class, emerging at village level, is mainly the old middle class. It is a counterpart of the urban old middle class. Peasants are mainly shifting towards occupations like shop keeping, land deals, contract work and middlemen work, which are identified as the old middle class occupations. In the study, it was found that the economic and social-cultural embourgeoisement is more prominent in comparison to political embourgeoisement. Political behaviour is mainly based on caste. But very few peasants come in this category. Supporting parties on the basis of caste is found among the urban and rural middle classes. During its emerging phase, the middle class was more nationalistic but in the later period it became more regionalist and casteist in nature. This has also contributed to the emergence of caste based parties. Although the middle class is emerging in every caste, the rural middle class mainly comprises of upper and middle castes. There are some instances of embourgeoisement among the lower castes, but this is limited in comparison to the upper and middle castes. The major reason may be that the lower castes do not own big chunks of land. Some of the lower caste peasants, having enough land and located at an advantageous position such as near the roads, have undergone economic as well as social-cultural embourgeoisement. Some of them have sold the land which

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

181

they had got from government allocation or selling land. These peasants have become economically and socially mobile. The economic as well as social-cultural embourgeoisement, have brought different castes at a level where they share common economic as well as social status. But the burgeoning middle caste exists only as a class in itself, not as the class for itself. They have a common economic position and lifestyle but no consciousness about their common location. Though the caste distinctions are disappearing and economic status is getting more important, caste still has some role to play because caste identities are still more important than class identities among affluent peasants. Nevertheless, the social composition of the rural middle class is mainly marked by a higher representation of the upper castes and the middle castes, with a minuscule middle class among the lower castes (Ahmed and Reifeld 2001). As with the urban middle classes, the rural middle class is also characterized by caste and communal divides not only at social level but also in political behaviour.

References Ahmed, I. and H. Reifeld (eds.). 2001. Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe, New Delhi: Social Science Press. Andoh, Paul. 2011. State Policy, Depeasantization and Agrarian Change: Exploring Cassava-Starch Initiative in the Transformation of Peasant Livelihoods in Ghana, Germany: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. Beteille, Andre. (1965) 2012. Caste, Class and Power, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Beteille, Andre. 2001. “The Social Structure of the Indian Middle Class”, in I. Ahmed and H. Reifeld (eds), Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe, New Delhi: Social Science Press, pp. 73–85. Census. 2011. “Largest Urban Agglomerations in India by Population”, retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanisation_in_India. Chauhan, B.R. 1967. A Rajasthan Village, New Delhi: A.C. Brothers House. Desai, A.R. (1948) 2005. The Social Background of Indian Nationalism, Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. Dube, S.C. 1955. Indian Village, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Fernandes, Leela. 2006. India’s New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Goldthorpe, John H., David Lockwood, Frank Bechhofer, and Jennifer Platt. 1967. “The Affluent Worker and the Thesis of Embourgeoisement:

182

Chapter Ten

Some Preliminary Research Findings,” Sociology, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 11–31. Jafri, S.S.A., H.R. Nangalia and S.M.S. Jafri. 2011. “Acquisition of Agricultural Land: Lucknow Metropolis”, Indian Economy Review, Vol. VII Quarterly Issue (1 January). Lobo, Lancy and Shashikant Kumar. 2009. Land Acquisition, Displacement and Resettlement in Gujarat 1947–2004, New Delhi: Sage Publications India. Majumdar, D.N. 1958. Caste and Communication in an Indian Village, New Delhi: Asia Publishing House. Marriott, McKim. 1955. “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilisation”, in McKim Marriott (ed.), Village India, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 171–222. Misra, Rajesh. 2010. “Control from the Middle: A Perspective on Indian New Middle Class”, in T.K. Oommen (ed.), Classes, Citizenship and inequality, Delhi: Pearson, pp. 141–161. Misra, Rajesh. 2004. “Towards an Analytical Construct of the New Middle Class”, in Yogesh Atal and Rajesh Misra (eds), Understanding the Social Sphere: The Village and Beyond, Jaipur: Rawat Publications, pp. 244–262. Mukherjee, R. 1957. The Dynamics of a Rural Society: A Study of the Economic Structure in Bengal Villages. Berlin: Academic Verlag. NSS Report No. 493 (59/18.1/1) “Livestock Ownership Across Operational Land Holding Classes in India” NSS 59th Round, 2006. Retrieved from http://planningcommission.gov.in/sectors/agri_html/Livestock%20 ownership%2059round%202003.pdf Palshikar, S. 2001. “Politics of India's Middle Classes”, in I. Ahmed and H. Reifeld (eds), Middle Class Values in India and Western Europe, New Delhi: Social Science Press, pp. 171–193. Sharma, Babita. 2009. Rural-Urban Articulation: A Study of the Rudahi Village of Lucknow District. Unpublished M.Phil. Dissertation. Department of Sociology, University of Lucknow. Singh, Gurpreet. 2012. Depeasantization in Punjab: Processes and Determinants. Germany: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. Soni, Anita. 2009. “Urban Conquest of Outer Delhi Beneficiaries, Intermediaries and Victims: The Case of the Meahrauli Countryside”, in Sujata Patel and Kushal Deb (eds), Urban Studies, New Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks, pp. 294–317. Srinivas, M.N. 1952. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Depeasantization, Embourgeoisement, and the Rural Middle Class

183

Srinivas, M.N. (ed.). 1972. Social Change in Modern India, New Delhi: Orient Blackswan. Thorner, D. and A. Thorner. 1962. Land and Labour in India, Bombay: Asia Publishing House. Wiser, W.H. 1936. The Hindu Jajmani System, Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House.

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE RURAL MIDDLE CLASS: THE NATURE OF SOCIAL CHANGE IN CHAROTAR (ANAND, GUJARAT) SHASHIKANT KUMAR

Introduction The rural middle class has shared similarities with its urban counterpart when looked from the point of view of typical behaviour of individuals or social groups. It means first the social mobility, personal autonomy and the social capacity to get out of the traditional webs of hierarchical relationships. Second, the rising middle class, in every historical context, has been quite conscious of its rights and the social recognition of its place in society. Moreover, economic and social ambition drives it towards embracing ideas of a progressive, rule-bound and peaceful society. As Nandkumar (2010) mentions, There are 16.4 million urban middle-class households and 15.6 million rural middle class households in the country, but the latter had a better purchasing power because they do not incur any expenditure on rent, transport and school fees, compared to their urban counterparts, who spend a sizable portion of their income on these items.

The housing census data 2011 shows that satisfactory housing is more available to the rural middle class than urban. The households have less concerns and expenditure on the house on account of no or low rents, less loan liability and more stable expenditure in the households. The households might be able to spend more on Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) than many urban middle class people. The change from the landed middle class to the non-farming-based service class has increased the economic potential of the rural communities. There is a general decline in poverty ratios, more so in the rural areas. It is also believed that the rise in

The Rural Middle Class

185

income in the rural middle class triggers migration to urban areas and thus the urban middle class is more prominent than the rural. The marketing professionals often rely on the rural middle class and classify it as the untapped or high potency market for FMCG. The social sector reforms in the country are observed not merely in urban India but can be perceived in the rural India as well. The change is due to general economic growth and resultant income has also led to change in the households living in rural areas. Movement of IT start-ups in rural India is nourished by increasing numbers of educated rural unemployed in India, i.e. youth who are at least graduates and do not want to be engaged in farm work. There are many such young people in the hinterlands who have chosen to work closer to home/village in small towns operating IT business, stockbroking, agro-marketing, pharma and FMCG industries. To meet the marketing requirement of the FMCG and cheap human resource requirements of the IT/ITES, companies choose to operate closer to the rural market and mostly employ rural youth. Though the salaries and perks are much less than those of their urban counterparts, low expenditure on account of being closer to the village attracts them to these white collar jobs.

Gujarat: Changing Urban and Rural Work Profile The data on projected Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) shows just a 3 percentage point increase by 2017, whereas Female LFPR increases marginally during the same period. But even this marginal increase in women’s participation would be difficult to absorb in the current sectorwise investment trends in the state (Table 11.1). About 3.0 million people will seek employment in Gujarat by the year 2017, of which 2.0 million will be from rural Gujarat. If more than 60% of the workforce is expected to get gainful employment there will be a sizeable rural middle class rise. Rural Gujarat would like to have large share of consumers mainly interested in consumption of FMCG. Table 11.1: Projected Rural Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) in Gujarat Male Female Person

2007 59.98 32.27 46.78

Source: Based on NCEUS report, 2009

2012 61.95 33.01 48.23

2017 63.41 33.98 49.52

186

Chapter Eleven

Table 11.2: Labour Force Projection (in Million) in Gujarat

Male Female Person Male Female Person Male Female Person

UPSS Labour Force 2007 2012 2017 Rural 10.49 11.42 12.30 6.94 7.54 8.17 17.43 18.96 20.48 Urban 7.6 8.07 8.99 1.65 1.83 2.01 8.70 9.90 10.99 Total 17.55 19.49 21.29 8.59 9.37 10.18 26.13 28.86 31.47

MCWS Labour Force 2007 2012 2017 10.25 5.79 16.04

11.22 6.49 17.71

12.06 7.22 19.28

7.01 1.50 8.51

8.06 1.72 9.78

8.98 1.94 10.92

17.26 7.29 24.55

19.28 8.21 27.49

21.04 9.15 30.20

Source: Based on NCEUS report, 2009; UPSS = The Usual Principal and Subsidiary Status; MCWS = Modified Current Weekly Status.

Anand: Rural Hinterland of Gujarat Charotar Region

Map 11.1: Location of Study Area

The Rural Middle Class

187

Demographic Changes: Anand District and Taluka Population growth in Anand District during the years 1991–2001 was 13.04% compared with 17.48% in Anand Taluka. In the years 2001–2011 growth rate decreased by 0.47% in Anand District compared with 0.57% increase in Anand Taluka. Only Anand Taluka recorded any increase in growth rate in these years.

Figure 11.1: Rural-Urban Share

Compared to Anand district, the taluka has about 50% share of urban population as shown in the 2011 census.

Primary Survey and Analysisi As a part of a study on the “rurbanization” conducted during the threemonth study, the author and their team tried to assess the nature of changes. The social changes with the concept of rurbanization needed to assess (a) whether rural areas require urban level amenities; (b) the cluster which would require such support; (c) how changes in the physical environment would help in harnessing economic and social potential of villages. In the first stage, (a) a parametric analysis of the villages in Anand taluka was studied to identify the cluster that needed further investigation and (b) primary investigation through site visits and discussions with village leaders and elders was carried out.

188

Chapter Eleven

Map 11.2: Transport Network: Anand Taluka

Map 11.3: Score Map of Anand Taluka

190

Chapter Eleven

Analysis of Change: Rurbanization In this analysis, villages are given scores from 1 to 5 rating their population, area, density, literacy, transport links, proximity to municipal services, number of workers, number of cultivators, and education. Those with the highest total score are deemed to be the ones most suitable for linking in clusters for future planning strategies.

Physical Observations and Analysis Given the slow urbanization in Anand district, it is surprising to note the growth of villages, mainly the high population villages, as entities independent of the core city. The people from these villages are themselves engaged in the development of schools, colleges, infrastructure facilities, and religious centres. Thus the villages have now specialized in one activity or another. The people from Anand city prefer to visit such centres to get extended facilities. Table 11.3: Villages outside the City Limits as Service Centres for Urban Areas Village* Mogar Sandesar Jitodiya Vadod Navli Hadgud Vasad

Core Facility (distance) Hospital (7 km) International School (8 km) Ashram (8 km) District Court (5 km) Agro Industry School (8 km) Water and Soil Research (10 km) College

Name Sankara Eye Hospital

Tobacco/Poultry Industry Swaminarayan Vidya Sankul WASMO SVNIT, Vasad

*Villages have no residential development contiguous with Anand city

Primary Investigation Anand taluka has been taken as the unit of study for understanding the socioeconomic change to identify the villages showing urban characteristics. The villages were chosen by conducting parametric analysis of Anand taluka.

The Rural Middle Class

Map 11.4: Villages for Primary Investigation

191

192

Chapter Eleven

Social Changes in the Study Area Villages in the study area recorded 50,770 persons in 1991, 56,294 in 2001 and 66,163 in the 2011 census. The growth rate was recorded at 10.88% and 17.53% in 1991–2001 and 2001–2011 respectively. During 2001–2011 a declining growth rate trend has been observed in Adas and Rajupura villages, whereas Anklavdi, Napad Talpad, Napad Vanto, Vadod, and Vasad have shown increasing growth. The average decadal growth rate in Anand District has been recorded at 13.04% in 1991–2001and 12.57% during 2001–11 and Anand taluka (an administrative unit of a district) has been recorded at 17.48% in 1991–2001 and 18.05% during 2001–11.

Figure 11.2: Literacy Rate in Selected Villages

There seems to be a growing trend towards urbanization. 40.86% of the total population in the cluster is workers in the main and marginal categories. The cluster displays an urban settlement character and needs better and planned future development. The majority of the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) population were found in Vasad and Napad Vanto respectively. Vasad has more varied socioeconomic characteristics, which is another indication of urbanization.

The Rural Middle Class

193

The Nature of Sociocultural Change The cropping intensity has increased with a greater area under commercial crops. The areas irrigated from multiple sources have increased, leading to a double cropping system and enhanced income for the landholders. Traditionally, the villages have the highest per capita production of the commercial crops like tobacco, bananas, and pulses. In addition, many villages in the study area have also been practicing animal husbandry. The villages in the study area like Navli, Napad Talpad, and Vadod show high employment in the poultry sector. The additional income received from such sources has added to their disposable incomes. Most of the villages in the study area also have developed a specific area outside the gamtal (village settlement) for the development along lines more usually associated with urban areas. Mostly the houses are farm houses, bungalows, twin houses, row houses, and tenements. The villages having such houses are aware of the nature of services required including provision of street lights, common plots, community space, etc. and these have been provided in such blocks. Since the study area villages are at least 8–10 km from Anand city and have no contiguous urban expansion, such development proves the desire of settlements to have facilities on a par with urban areas. The villages in the study were now found to have not just grocery shops, as previously, but mobile repairing, readymade garments, printing press, auto garages, meat/fish shops and others. In addition, the informal selling of goods is also taking place on the major streets of the village. The transformation of the village from the caste based hierarchy to a typical semi urban society could be observed. Street vending has expanded on major roads abutting the village. The quality of the village infrastructure is better than it was 20 years ago with paved RCC roads for the major streets, tap water for the majority of the residents, proper toilets and baths and increased solid waste composition. The villages have taken advantage of the various schemes and laid the streets in identical patterns. The villages now have bus stands, rickshaw stands, and transport hubs to facilitate daily travellers. Parking has also emerged as a major problem on the village streets, and people do not like to drive on the narrow and winding streets of the village. This has led to expansion to the outskirts. Preliminary observation also reveals the changes in the marriage ceremonies, religious customs, and social behaviour of the communities. The youth are eager to organize sporting events (cricket) every season, have a DJ party for social events (like their urban counterparts), give more

194

Chapter Eleven

importance to television (leading to no activity on the streets at night), and use more vehicles on the roads. The show of unity during the cultural events like Navratri (nine night festival) is similar to that in cities as are other things such as lights, artists, and commercial components in the events. The celebrations have more firecrackers, variety of foods, and cultural mixing (with Bollywood songs and dance) leading to a semi-urban character.

Towards a Rural Middle Class The following observations can be made to indicate the transformation and emergence of the new rural middle class. • • • • • • • •

Aspiration for goods and services like banking, credit cards, investment in stocks, post-paid /pre-paid mobile connection, satellite TV, and other electronic gadgets like their urban counterparts. Spending more time on recreation and out station tours and eating out at weekends. Displaying wealth during cultural and social events; participating to show their talent. Active participation in village affairs and greater assertiveness about their rights including asking questions to government. Better connection with media and decision makers. Greater youth participation in competitions along with urban counterparts in cultural, sports, and political events. A sense of pride in what they are doing even if it is agriculture, animal husbandry, retail business, etc. Consumption of identical goods and services by visiting shopping areas and branded showrooms; even concern about quality and price.

Conclusion The above study points to the series of studies that can be undertaken to understand the causative factors responsible for the emergence of a rural middle class. The impact of urban political character on the rural middle class, and how distinct they are from their urban counterparts are questions that have to be examined. It is understood that rural areas have different area profiles, patterns of land use, occupations and settlement size. In future rural aspirants from this middle class will also act agents of change bringing self-employment, changes in cropping, and innovation in the primary sector. Whether the rural middle income group subscribes to a host of rural schemes is another question that requires to be studied. Subsequent research

The Rural Middle Class

195

must seek answers to the pertinent questions for the understanding of the rural middle class.

Note i

This study draws from the project conducted by Shri Vinit Rajpurohit, Rurbanisation in Anand District (Unpublished Thesis: APIED, V. V. Nagar), which was part of a larger study entitled Existing Situation and Land Use Analysis: AVKUDA 2013 under the author’s guidance and field inputs.

References NCEUS. 2009. “The Challenge of Employment in India: An Informal Economy Perspective” Volume I, New Delhi, NCEUS retrieved from http://nceuis.nic.in/The_Challenge_of_Employment_in_India.pdf on 13 February 2013. Nandakumar, M.P. 2010. Rural Middle Class: An Untapped Market, Lecture at Auxulium College, Vellore retrieved from http://www.madisonindia.com/media/pdf/rural_middle_class.pdf on 11 February 2013.

Chapter Eleven

196

Distance (urban)

2001 Pop.

Transport links

Literacy

Pop. density

Cultivators Pop

SC Pop

Workers Pop.

Education

Total score

Annexure: Parameter Scores for the Villages in Anand Taluka

Meghva Gana Khandhali

1 1

1 1

2 2

2 1

2 2

1 1

2 4

1 1

2 1

14 14

Jakhariya Anklavdi Kherda Khanpur Rahtalav Vans Khiliya Sundan Ramnagar Gopalpura Sandesar Napad Talpad Tarnol Lambhvel Bedva Jol Navli Mogar Gana Rajupura (part) Rajupura (part) Rajupura Vaghasi Ajarpura

3 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 3 3 1 2 4 3 3 3 2 4 1 1 1 4 3

1 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2

3 3 2 1 2 2 3 3 3 1 3 1 3 2 1 2 3 2 3 3 3 3 3

2 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 1 3 2 3 1 2 3 2 2 2 3 2

1 1 1 1 3 4 3 3 3 2 2 3 3 4 2 3 2 4 4 4 4 2 2

1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 3 1 2 3 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2

2 3 3 3 3 3 1 1 3 2 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 3 5 5 5 4 3

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 2 1 1 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 2

1 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2 1 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 3

15 15 15 15 17 17 17 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 21 21 21 22 22 22 22 22 22

Kasor Vaherakhadi Khambholaj Napad Vanto

2 2 4 1

3 3 3 4

1 2 1 3

2 2 2 1

3 4 3 3

5 3 3 1

2 2 2 3

2 2 2 2

22 22 22 22

Napad Vanto (part) Ode (m)

1 5

4 4

3 1

1 2

2 2 2 4 4

3 3

1 1

3 1

2 2

22 22

Location

3

The Rural Middle Class

197

Jitodiya (part)

4

2

3

3

5

1

2

1

2

23

Kunjrao Valasan Hadgood Rasnol Adas Mogri Vasad Sarsa Vadod Gamdi Boriavi (M) Samarkha Karamsad (M) Chikhodra Part of Bakrol Bakrol (Part) Vallabh Vidyanagar (M) Anand (Urban)

4 3 4 3 1 4 1 2 2 4 5 4 5 4 4 5

3 3 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 4 5 5 4 4 4

1 1 3 2 4 3 5 2 4 3 5 3 4 3 3 3

2 2 2 3 2 3 1 1 3 2 3 1 4 2 4 4

2 4 5 2 2 5 3 2 3 5 4 3 4 4 4 4

3 2 1 3 3 1 2 5 4 1 3 5 2 3 3 3

4 3 2 3 3 3 1 3 3 2 1 3 1 4 4 4

2 2 2 3 3 2 3 4 3 3 2 5 2 4 4 4

2 3 1 2 2 1 5 3 3 5 3 2 4 4 2 2

23 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 29 29 30 31 31 32 32 33

5 5

5 5

4 5

5 5

5 5

1 2

1 3

5 5

5 5

36 40

CHAPTER TWELVE INDIA’S MIDDLE CLASS: MEASURING STANDARD OF LIVING AND HEALTH DISPARITY AMONG SOCIAL GROUPS RAJESH RAUSHAN

Introduction The Indian middle class is not any special population group which can be classified based on defined and existing parameters of development but is heterogeneous in nature and composition. The term “middle class” has generally been employed to refer to that section of capitalist society which lies between the capitalist and the working class. The Indian “middle class” has a long history which starts with the British rule in India during the eighteenth century but before that it may also have had its existence with different notation and explanation (Mishra 1961; Bhatia 1994; Joshi 2011). This class is the product of 190 years of British rule in India and its origin is traced to the introduction of the western education system in India to enable the Indians to support the British government in running the administration (Bhatia 1994). The Indian middle class, like the middle class anywhere in the world, is differentiated in terms of occupation or income or both. As Max Weber writes, the factor that creates the class is unambiguously economic interest with classes stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods (Gerth and Mills 1948). If the class is linked with a person’s economic position then occupation serves as its primary index (Raynor 1969). As Runciman (1966) says, a person’s class is a reflection of his shared location in the economic hierarchy as opposed to the hierarchies of prestige and power. But the middle class occupational structure ranges from, say, the dignified heights of some professionals,

India’s Middle Class

199

down to small shopkeepers and shared location which presupposes a consciousness of occupational positions (Raynor 1969). The term “middle class” was coined in the early years of the industrial revolution in Great Britain although there were middle class occupations in the pre-industrial period but they had not received recognition as middle class. The term “middle class” in India rose with the advent of British rule. The first systematic explanation about the growth and development of the Indian middle class is found in Mishra (1961), but the peculiarity in India is its diversity in terms of language, religion, and caste which in turn has come to represent so great a diversity in terms of incomes, status, vocations, skills, and educational qualifications among groups and individual constituents that it becomes practically meaningless to group them together and designate them as a single social class (Bhatia 1994). A survey of sociological work on the middle class has ended on the note that “while the middle class has never comprised a coherent unity even in the class bourgeois age of the nineteenth century, it is even more of a heterogeneous grouping today” (King and Raynor 1981). It leads to a methodological debate in defining and measuring this class very clearly. Income reflects social class status on one hand and consumption, possessions, and living standards on the other. Interestingly, studies have widely used income generation and consumption and expenditure indicators to measure middle class (Shukla and Purusothaman 2008; ADB 2010; Kannan and Raveendran 2011). Among the social scientists, the middle class concept has started finding increasing acceptance. Its usefulness as a tool of analysis of social change that India has undergone since independence has begun to be widely recognized (Bhatia 1994). Social classes are multidimensional and in seeking to unravel the social class, social status, and power dimensions, different sets of criteria will have to be employed (Raynor 1969). For instance, considering the occupational structure to categorize a person as middle class, it is better to employ socioeconomic categories. In the context of defining and measuring India’s middle class, this study focuses on measuring India’s middle class and its links with health and health care behaviour. As health and health care behaviour are strongly linked to the socioeconomic status of the individuals and since health care is still a neglected aspect in India’s development arena, it is necessary to undertake the study of India’s middle class and its links with health and health care behaviour. Considering the standard of living as a reflector of a person’s economic position in the stratum determines social and class status and has an influential effect on health and health care behaviour. Henceforth, the study revolves around these aspects of the middle class in the first part of the study and in the

200

Chapter Twelve

second part focuses on underlying structural linkages of living standards, health status and health care. In the last part, the study concludes with a summary of the study.

I Methods and Materials There is no database in India which directly collects data particularly on middle class population as is done for social groups. Hence, to capture the estimates of middle class population in the country’s total population we have to rely on other alternatives. To overcome the problem, this study has used the third wave of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)1 conducted in 28 states and the Union Territory of Delhi in 2005–06, which includes a total of 109,041 households over the country. The other reasons to use the NFHS are that it is a nationwide survey and provides estimates of demographic as well as health outcome and health care behaviour comparable internationally. Using the estimation method, explained in the next section, 43,024 households have been found lying in the middle class. So the sample size of the particular study should be understood as 43,024 households spread over the country.

Methodology for Identification of the Middle Class The third round of the NFHS included several new and emerging issues related to health of Indian people for the first time,2 although the standard of living variable has improved with greater response. One of the important characteristics of the NFHS survey is the collection of data on various households’ assets and possessions. Indirectly, these household possessions and assets reflect accumulation over many years, so they may be a better indicator of a household’s long term economic standing than an annual measure such as income. Based on those assets and amenities available within the households, a wealth index has been constructed for measuring the status of households on the economic scale. It is an indicator of the level of wealth that is consistent with expenditure and income measures. The wealth index has been developed and tested in a large number of countries in relation to inequalities in household income, use of health services and health outcome (Rutstein 1999; Rutstein et al. 2000; IIPS & Macro International 2007). So, keeping these methodological advantages in mind, the study uses the wealth index to measure the middle class. On the basis of a wealth index, households have

India’s Middle Class

201

been classified into five quintiles, namely, the poorest, the poorer, the middle, the richer, and the richest.3,4 Using wealth index parameters’ third and fourth quintiles, households have been considered as of “middle wealth”. The logic behind considering the third and fourth quintiles is that still around 30% of the population in India is living below the poverty line and the top 10–20% of the population are among the richest, so households lying in the third and fourth quintiles would be understood as representative of the Indian middle class, although even within the middle class there is much heterogeneity. For better comparison, national level household weight has been used throughout the analysis.

Analytical Framework Using the univariate method, the concentration of the middle class on socioeconomic, cultural, and regional scales and their interstate distribution has been provided. Then, the middle class has been further categorized into four social groups5 as broadly classified by the Indian government for grouping castes. These social groups directly or indirectly reflect caste in India. This has been done to observe the persisting disparity among the social groups within India’s middle class. The standard of living and status of health and health care are then analysed using bivariate analysis among social groups within the Indian middle class. For assessing the standard of living among different social groups, type of house, household crowding,6 improved sources of drinking water,7 improved and not shared toilet facilities,8 availability of electricity within the household, separate kitchen facilities and use of clean fuel for cooking have been taken into consideration. These are the components which are directly or indirectly regulated by the economic status of individuals and households as well. Further, the status of health and health care moves around maternal and child health care and chronic and acute illness among women and household members. All these have been analysed in the first part of the study. The second part uses multivariate analysis to investigate structural links among the variables under study. The technical interpretation has been provided in section two of the study.

202

Chapter Twelve

II Results of the Study Estimates of the Indian Middle Class Estimates of the size of India’s middle class vary significantly from one study to another depending upon the methodology used, as there is still a methodological challenge for measuring the middle class population in the country. Interestingly, studies have found their share ranges between 10 and 30% of the country’s population. For example, according to the National Council of Applied Economic Research study (2007–08), 126 million households are in the middle income category, earning between 3,830 and 22,970 US dollars annually (Shukla and Purusothaman 2008). Presenting it in relative terms, another recent estimate by Kannan and Raveendran (2011) shows around 19% of India’s total population lying in the middle class. However, they also point to significant regional variations in the spread of middle income population. Based on National Sample Survey 66th Round data, Meyer and Birdsall (2012) estimated that less than 6% of Indians or just under 70 million people were middle class in 2009–10, using a minimum threshold of $10 per capita per day (2005 PPP) and a maximum threshold of $50 a day. Table 12.1: Wealth Index and Socio Regional Distribution in India Place of Residence Urban Rural Regions North NE East West Central South Social Group* SC ST OBC Others

Poor 9.7 55.3

Middle 43.4 37.6

Rich 46.9 7.1

Total 35580 73461

24.6 44.0 57.1 25.3 56.8 27.8

43.1 42.3 31.4 42.4 30.1 50.8

32.3 13.7 11.5 32.3 13.0 21.4

13874 4294 23543 16147 24310 26874

53.3 74.1 40.6 22.2

37.3 20.6 43.7 40.7

9.5 5.3 15.7 37.2

20982 9189 44049 32438

India’s Middle Class

Religion Hindu Muslim Christian Sikh Others Total

41.6 40.7 24.2 8.5 40.6 40.5

38.9 43.1 43.4 40.7 28.7 39.5

203

19.5 16.2 32.4 50.7 30.7 20.1

88967 13646 2952 1711 1738 109014

Note: *Caste Group for 2383 HH head is missing so total will not be 109014. Pearson’s chi-square test and likelihood ratio test is significant at 5% level (p